GUJRAT: Workers have started dismantling the recently-built rainwater disposal plant after its walls started tilting to one side even before its formal launch while pipelines for the drainage of the city’s rainwater are being laid down along Gujrat-Jalalpur Jattan Road.

Rainwater accumulation at Jail Chowk has been a major problem for the last two decades. In 2016-17, the district administration recommended a separate project of laying stormwater pipes and the rainwater disposal station.

The Punjab government allocated Rs50 million for the project in 2017-18.

However, execution on the scheme delayed for two years after the public health and engineering department first constructed a disposal station along Rehman Shaheed Road near Jail Chowk. The walls of the disposal station started tilting to one side causing serious concern about the quality and design of the disposal station.

A senior official of the district the administration told Dawn that the authorities had ordered fixing the fault due to which the tilted walls were being dismantled.

He said that due to delay in the release of funds, the total estimated cost had now been increased to Rs368 million and so far Rs200 million had been released as stormwater pipes were being laid from the Hailsey drain in the city outskirts near Boley up to Jail Chowk’s disposal station.

He said if the remaining funds were released, the scheme would be completed prior to the next rainy season.

He said the project also included the installation of powerful motors that could pull the stormwater to the Hailsey stormwater drain as the stormwater pipeline could not be used for sewerage purposes.

In 2006-07, the public health engineering department had laid the sewerage pipeline along the same route which failed within one year of the completion.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2021