Bhubaneswar, Aug. 8: Traffic policemen have joined hands with the public works department (PWD) officials to make city roads and streets waterlogging-free. Traffic cops have, in fact, been supervising the work at certain places.

Waterlogging was acute in certain areas such as Governor House Square, the 120 Infantry Battalion campus, Commissionerate Police Building, Rabindra Mandap, Exhibition Ground and many places along Jayadev Vihar and Nandankanan Road.

Traffic cops were prompted to take a pro-active role in the matter as hour-long rain induced waterlogging in some places used to throw normal traffic out of gear. Executive engineer P.C. Nayak of PWD Division III said the affected stretches were provided with “water traps” to carry storm water to nearby drains.

“We have already laid the water traps and engineering and masonry work is expected to end soon. Near the mouth or opening of the traps an iron cage will be placed to trap solid waste and garbage. This will prevent the passage from getting choked,’’ he added.

The traffic in-charge of the city police, however, added that “additional” work should have been planned while laying roads as “water traps” were part of the road design process.

“As the structures were never incorporated during the designing process, the responsibilities lie with us. People always lodged complaints with us when they faced problems in travelling through the roads after a shower,’’ he said. In fact, across the city, even at the design stage, engineers never considered the “water traps”.

“Even the mandatory “scrapping” of the old road before laying new roads are not followed resulting in increase in the height of the road than the plinth level of nearby buildings. So, when new roads are laid on old structures, technical defects surface due to retention of water in the porous old stretch that lies beneath. As the slope of the roads are not maintained as per specifications, waterlogging remains as a perennial problem,’’ said a senior government engineer on the condition of anonymity.

Retired PWD engineer-in-chief Nandanandan Das saidplanning for roads and drains in the city must always follow the catchment study of a particular geography as all these elements were part of the engineering course curriculum.

“While executing projects, in majority of cases, plans are approved in a mechanical way without going into the details and this leads to waterlogging. Bhubaneswar’s topography gives it a natural mechanism to de-clog rainwater, but faulty city planning creates man-made situations like water-logging,’’ Das added.