Berhampur, July 13: A pre-monsoon desiltation drive, undertaken by the Berhampur Municipal Corporation, has yielded good results.

Not a single incident of waterlogging or spread of water-borne diseases has been reported so far during this monsoon.

“Though monsoon arrived in this town about a month ago, not a single incident of waterlogging has yet been reported here this year. There hasn’t been any report of water-borne diseases either.

“This shows that our sanitation drive has been very effective this year in checking problems associated with the monsoon,” said health officer of the municipal corporation Subhakanta Das.

“This year, we launched the sanitation drive on May 21 and it was scheduled to end on July 17. But, the deadline for completion of desiltation exercise was extended for two more days to cover all the wards under the civic body,” Das added.

The total length of drains in the town is 453.608km. Of this, there are 153.506km pucca drains and 300.102km kutcha drains.

While the civic body has used its own resources to desilt drains in 23 out of 37 wards, private parties took charge of desiltation in the remaining 14 wards.

One Tata Hitachi and one Tata JCB drain dredging vehicles have been pressed into service for desilting the drains.

Councillor of ward No. 15 D. Karunakar expressed happiness over the fact that there were no incidents of waterlogging and water-borne diseases in the town this year.

“The desiltation exercise was highly essential and it has yielded good results,” he said.