Councillors and citizens infront of locked gate of the Sambalpur Municipality. Telegraph picture

Sambalpur, July 7: Councillors today locked the gates of Sambalpur Municipality and staged a dharna demanding the cleaning of the water of the Mahanadi.

Members of Sambalpur Bar Association and other local citizens also extended their support to the agitation.

The public health department is drawing water from the Mahanadi and the polluted water is being used by the people for drinking. As a result, several people are being infected by water-borne diseases,” said Siddharth Saha, a councillor of Sambalpur Municipality.

“The water of the Mahanadi should immediately be treated. The administration should step in and help the civic body in cleaning the river water. Otherwise, the residents of the city will suffer. The district administration should think of arranging funds and manpower to clean the river,” said Govind Agrawal, an elderly citizen, who participated in the agitation.

Additional district magistrate Madhab Chandra Bariha, who reached the agitation site to discuss with the agitators, said, “I will discuss the matter with the chairperson of the municipality and the district collector. A solution will hopefully come out in the next few days.”

However, Reena Trivedi, chairperson of the Sambalpur Municipality, said: “The Mahanadi should be cleaned by the irrigation department. In the last council meeting, it was resolved that the executive officer would discuss the matter with officials of the irrigation department.”

“As representatives of the people, we generally take up the repairing works of ghats of the Mahanadi but cleaning the river is a subject of the irrigation department. We don’t have so much funds and manpower to take up the cleaning work. Moreover, the Mahanadi can not be cleaned unless the sluice gate in Balibandha is closed by the irrigation department,” said Trivedi.

Executive engineer of the irrigation department, Prabhat Chandra Pattnaik, said: “We don’t have any funds for cleaning of the Mahanadi. In the last Sital Sasthi, the collector of Sambalpur had instructed the irrigation department to clean weeds along the Mahanadi. Fund for that work was arranged from peripheral development fund. But we don’t have any provision to take up the work of cleaning the river. We complied with the instruction of the district administration and cleaned the weeds.”

The agitators called off the strike after the additional district magistrate assured them that the problem would be resolved very soon.