The Mumbai Municipal Corporation has allegedly been displaying negligence in drain cleaning work before the monsoon. It is being said that the corporation’s claims that 75 per cent of the drain cleaning work is done are “false”. Hence, Mumbai BJP President Ashish Shelar has asked the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation to personally inspect the drains. He has also demanded that the Commissioner should issue a white paper on the drain cleaning work done by BMC this year.
Mumbai BJP President Ashish Shelar inspected the drain cleaning work at various locations in the western suburbs, including Gazdar Band Junction, South Avenue, North Avenue, and SNDT Nala. He brought to the administration’s attention that the work was not at all satisfactory. Ashish Shelar stated that Mumbai has around 2,000 kilometre of large and small narrow drains. Based on last year’s experience, over Rs 250 crores are spent on drain cleaning, but what do Mumbaikars see? Even with more than Rs 250 crores spent, the cleaning of 2000 kilometres of drains is not satisfactory.
“Today, I have personally inspected the situation. Given the current state of the work, it seems impossible that the complete drain cleaning will be done before the monsoon. The Municipal Commissioner should visit any spot and observe the situation. There is still time in our hands to make improvements. Given the exaggerated figures being thrown around, it is claimed that 75% of the cleaning is done but it doesn’t seem that more than 40-45% of the drains have been cleaned,” said Shelar.
“Just as Ratan Khatri had exaggerated figures in the past, the Municipal Corporation has such figures now. Where were the 2.73 lakh metric tons of silt disposed off,” Shelar asked. He also demanded to show the video and site where the silt has been disposed of. “Did BMC take the signatures of witnesses from the surrounding areas where the silt was removed? The figures provided by the contractors were presented by the corporation officials,” Shelar said criticising the BMC.
Shelar also targeted Shiv Sena UBT Chief Uddhav Thackeray, whose party (before the split) ruled the BMC for the last 25 years. “If Uddhav Thackeray had done the work properly in the last 25 years, this situation would not have arisen. The method of measuring the silt in the drains during Uddhavji’s time was bizarre. There was a rule during Uddhav Thackeray’s time not to clean the drain 100%. The process of measuring the silt in the drains, and its quantity, was different during Uddhavji’s time. Even after the rain, the percentage of commission was fixed to remove the silt from the drain. Therefore, a new standard to measure the drain silt and set the cleaning criteria will have to be established as early as possible and we demand that BMC administration should look into this issue as early as possible,” said Shelar.
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