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GUJRAT: The administration has not launched desilting of storm water drains and choked sewerage in the city while there is forecast for the pre-monsoon rains.
The citizens have expressed concerns over water accumulation on almost all the city roads after a short rain of a few minutes on Sunday night, causing inconvenience to the people.
The cleaning of drains and sewerage has been a regular feature ahead of the monsoon to reduce the possible damage caused by urban flooding, said a former elected representative of the municipal corporation.
He added that the metropolitan corporation could not launch desilting due to lack of planning and negligence.
The city has been known for having a major problem of drainage of rainwater since long and successive governments of different political parties could not fix the problem despite spending huge funds on it.
The PML-Q had got Rs1bn approved for sewerage schemes in the city and Rs250m were allocated in the current fiscal year; however, execution of the project was not even launched.
Similarly, the local authorities had pinned high hopes on a storm water pipeline project of 50 cusecs from Jail Chowk to Hailsey storm water channel near Boley Bridge along Jalalpur Jattan Road that, once completed, would reduce the problem of urban flooding. However, the project too could not become fully functional even after the passage of three years.
The official sources said the project was about to complete as efforts were being made to make it functional prior to the rainy season within the next couple of weeks.
The said project was approved by the last PML-N government in 2017-18; however, its execution was launched by the end of 2020.
Deputy Commissioner Rizwan Qadeer told Dawn he had visited the MC office where it was decided to launch the operations for cleaning drains and sewerage.
He said it was also decided to purchase winching machines instead of getting them on rent so that cleaning of sewerage in the city could continue on a regular basis.
Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2022
