Tejas Navale

Pune: With June arriving, everyone in the state is anticipating the monsoon. However, with just a week until the rains begin, the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has yet to complete its drainage cleaning work. When asked about it, the health department of the municipal corporation claims that 90 percent of the drain cleaning work has been completed. However, the pre-monsoon works are going on at a slow pace, and even though the month of May has ended, the drainage work still remains incomplete in the city.

Every year, the PCMC undertakes activities such as drainage cleaning and cleaning of streams and canals in the city as part of the pre-monsoon work. However, in recent years, the PCMC has been continuously unable to clean all drainages in the city before the onset of the monsoon. There are approximately 144 natural drains of 2 to 11 metres in width and a distance of 100 km in Pimpri Chinchwad city.

As all drains are open, people are throwing garbage, plastic, debris, and waste materials into these drains. Because of the accumulation of waste, the drainages and canals become narrow and shallow. As a result, the carrying capacity of the drains decreases during monsoons.

Because of this, rainwater does not flow away during the monsoon, and it accumulates and enters the houses and shops in the area. In this regard, Commissioner Shekhar Singh held a meeting on March 22 and ordered the completion of drainage cleaning before May 31 to avoid flooding in the city during the monsoon. However, the drains were not cleaned by the deadline. Unseasonal rains have occurred four to five times in the last fifteen days in the city area. Due to this, there were some obstacles in the drainage cleaning work.

Surprisingly, the health department of the municipal corporation has claimed that 90 percent of the drains have been cleaned. As it has been predicted that rain will fall on time in the state, the PCMC is facing the challenge of completing the remaining work before the arrival of the monsoon.

Additional commissioner Vijaykumar Khorate said that drainage cleaning work is going on through all eight regional offices and has reached the final stage. He further informed that drain cleaning is being done by JCB, Poklen, and Spider machines, and photos are being taken before and after the completion of drain cleaning.