BMC workers desilt a drain in Unit II area in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, June 7: Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started desilting internal drains on a war footing in all the 60 wards of the city.

With June 15 being the deadline for desiltation work, the councillors have been pressing the civic authority to step up the work. The Telegraph had published a report on the issue on May 24, days before the meeting.

All the internal drains in the city should be free from silt and garbage by the end of May, as monsoon arrives in the state by mid-June. This year, however, contractors had not responded to the BMC’s drain cleaning tenders, leaving drains in 20 wards untouched. Soon after the report was published in The Telegraph, the BMC authorities decided that in the wards where contractors were unwilling to take up the desilting work, the engineering wing of the corporation would do the needful.

“Out of the 60 wards under the BMC’s jurisdiction, the contractors are doing desilting works in 40 wards. In the rest of the 20 wards, the BMC, in association with the solid waste disposal management organisation, Jagruti, is carrying out the act,” said city health officer Ashok Panda, adding “while his office has formed four squads, with 10 semi-skilled workers in one each, to take up the cleaning job, the excavated soil, garbage and silt are being transported to the dumping yard at Bhuasuni by Jagruti.’’

Out of the total of 60 wards, many new wards are still managing with open drainage system. So, in fact, there is provision of concrete drains in 50 wards.

“But as not all the drains need desilting work, a length of 2km of drain is being desilted on an average in a ward. Therefore, the drive, which is jointly managed by the city health office and the engineering section of the BMC, is going to desilt more than 100km length of drains by June 15,” Panda added.

The excavated soil heaps on the roadsides, however, create problems in traffic management as they occupy a major portion of the space along the major thoroughfares. But, the BMC officials clarified that the soil dumps are transported once they dry up and they are generally kept on the roadside till senior officials of the civic body inspect the sites properly.

“The BMC has formed a team of officials including municipal commissioner Vishal Kumar Dev, city engineer T.B.K. Shroff, the city health officer and officer on special duty (sanitation) Anil Kumar Patnaik. After the officials inspect a site and become convinced regarding the quality of desiltation work, the silt and excavated materials are lifted by contractors,’’ Panda said.

Ward councillor of Unit VI area, Pranab Swain, said: “The work done under desiltation this year would be one of the best efforts in the past few years. Because more than six tractor loads of silt is being excavated from a half-kilometre stretch in the ward. At some localities, new drains are also being added, and the earth movers are being used to enhance the speed of the work.’’

Bhimsen Sahu, a shop owner in Ganganagar, added: “From the desiltation work, it seems that the civic body had not done the work seriously in its last term. The work should become an annual practice to keep the city free from waterlogging.’’

Councillor of Goutamnagar area, Kishore Kumar Mohanty, however, expressed doubts over the fate of the excavated materials lying on the edge of the drains for long.

“A single shower can play havoc and the excavated soil, if not transported immediately to the dumping ground, can again refill the drains. In such a scenario, the money spent on the entire exercise will be wasted,’’ he added.

Sanitation officials, however, explained that the excavated materials are being transported as quickly as possible, and there is no question of the drains being filled again with the soil due to rain. “We are keeping a vigil in all areas and our ward officers are monitoring the desiltation work at the grass-root level,’’ said the city health officer.

The sanitation officials also criticised the habit of the residents of the city to throw solid and other building material wastes and food wastes to the nearby stormwater drains.

But surprisingly, even after a year of declaring about a campaign to make people aware on the benefits of cleaner drains, the civic authorities initiated nothing as such in reality.

“With the desiltation work going on in full swing this year, the problem of waterlogging will definitely reduce this monsoon. We hope that drainwater will easily be channelled through the natural drainage channels of the city during the rains this year,’’ said Panda.