BMC yet to complete even 50% of desilting works: Opposition

Mumbai Leaders of the opposition parties in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday have accused the civic administration of irregularities in the ongoing pre-monsoon desilting works.

The leaders have said that with only two weeks left this month, the BMC administration has not been able to finish even 50% of the pre-monsoon desilting works.

Meanwhile, civic officials of the Storm Water Drains (SWD) department maintained that as of May 16, they have already achieved 60% of the proposed target.

In a tweet on Monday, Ravi Raja, former municipal corporator and leader of opposition in the BMC, said, “The desilting work is moving at a snail’s pace. So far, only 39% of the work is complete and the monsoon will arrive in a couple of weeks. @mybmc just to save their face sending show cause notices to contractor. But it won’t help. This year too city will face water logging due to this,” read Raja’s tweet.

“We were told by the BMC that pre-monsoon desilting of all the major and minor nullahs will be finished by May 15, but it is May 16 already and almost all the major and minor nullahs of this city still needs to be cleared. The civic administration has made tall claims of doing desilting works 24x7 but these works are not happening anywhere. All the chronic flooding spots like Hind-Mata, King’s Circle and Parel will again see serious waterlogging this year,” said Raja on Monday.

Earlier on April 15, municipal commissioner, Iqbal Singh Chahal, had said that this year, the desilting works have started late because all the statutory committees in the civic body were dissolved on March 7, after the tenure of the elected corporators got over, which eventually delayed the process of issuing work orders to contractors.

“The municipal commissioner was appointed as an administrator by the state government on March 6 and all the proposals related to desilting works were cleared after April 3 by the administrator. The delay was caused by the administration who should have cleared these proposals immediately on priority in the month of March itself,” said Vinod Mishra, former Bharatiya Janaya Party (BJP) corporator and group leader in BMC.

“In the last standing committee meeting, the proposal for desilting of only three municipal wards in western suburbs were cleared. Proposals for the remaining 21 wards were not tabled till the committees were in force,” Mishra said.

“The desilting works are nothing but an eye-wash. At present, the tenure of public representatives is over and the administration knows that nobody can question them which is why they are doing their work with such laxity,” said Rais Shaikh, former corporator from Samajwadi Party.

Meanwhile, a senior official from the civic SWD department stated that 60 per cent of the pre-monsoon target has already been achieved.

“The complaints that we are getting are related to floating materials that we see on nullahs and rivers, which most of the citizens are mistaking as sludges. These are not sludges but regular household waste materials like plastic that are being dumped on the water bodies. The removal of these materials is ongoing,” said the official.

“Every year, we complete 75 per cent of the desilting works before the onset of monsoon and the remaining 25 per cent of the sludge is cleared only during monsoon. So far, we have achieved 60 per cent of the target and the remaining 15 per cent will be done by end of May,” the official said.

Last week, the civic body had also sent a show cause notice to one of the contractors for not being able to achieve his target within a given time.