With pre-monsoon work like desilting of sewerage lines and clearing blockages being far from over, citizens are in for another uncomfortable monsoon. A single heavy spell of rain will turn drainage and storm water manholes into fountains, and stinking water and filth will ooze out of uncleaned manholes.
The Water Board had released Rs 70-odd lakh just three days ago for desilting of drains, a mandatory pre-monsoon exercise that should have been complete by the end of May. There are 1.60 lakh manholes along the city’s drainage lines that are maintained by the Water Board in the core city. There are another 1.50 lakh manholes on storm water drains in Greater Hyderabad, including 50,000 on drainage lines in surrounding municipalities that are maintained by the GHMC. While square-shaped manhole covers belong to GHMC, the circular ones are under the control of Water Board.
“When it rains heavily, water oozes out from all types of manholes. A woman bank employee had got washed away after she slipped into a huge manhole at Amberpet a few years ago. Her body was found kilometres away. Some manholes do not have covers and some manhole covers are removed by citizens who assume that the flood water will flow away into it, when, in fact, the opposite happens,” said Hyder Shah Ali, a resident of Bagh Amberpet.
“Even when drainage lines are cleaned, the workers remove the silt and leave it by the side of the manholes,” said Gurumurthy Naidu, a resident of East Marredpally, continuing, “Then the Water Board and GHMC starts blaming each other over whose duty it is to remove the silt from the road. The rain washes the silt back to the drainage.”
GHMC gets ready for monsoon emergencies
On Thursday, the GHMC finally started preparations to deal with rain-related emergencies. Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu directed the officials to set up emergency teams and monsoon emergency control rooms that would function 24x7 and make known to people the phone numbers of staff and teams on emergency duty.
Officials were asked to stop giving permissions for road digging, update the list of dilapidated buildings and pull down the most vulnerable ones that are likely to collapse, fill up potholes and craters on roads and complete the desilting of drains. The GHMC commissioner wanted all officers being deputed on monsoon related duties to be given training in alarm mechanism. He wanted a strategy plan to be prepared for all water stagnation points. Field staff were told to check all manhole covers and replace the damaged ones, and keep sand bags ready at bunds that could be used in case of breaches. Officials were told to conduct mock-drills and remove debris from roads.