Ahead of the northeast monsoon, which is only about a couple of months away, the demand for cleaning natural drains is getting stronger. The natural drains carry the run-off water from roads and storm water drains to the tanks in the city and help reduce instances of water stagnation.
Councillors say that most of the natural drains in the city – Karupparayan Odai, Sanganoor Pallam, Ganapathy-Singanallur Drain, Raja Vaikal in Kurichi, the canal that carries water from the Big Tank to the Singanallur Tank and a few others are full of bushes, waste, filled with silt and chocked with debris. There is also the issue of encroachment.
Ward 86 Councillor A. Sadiq Ali said that sometime ago the Coimbatore Corporation tried to desilt the canal that carried water from the Big Tank through Karumbukkadai but it could not complete the operation as the contractor cited several reasons for not proceeding with the work.
One of the reasons was that the machine was getting stuck in the slush.
The contractor then said that he would take up the work manually and promised to do so but the promise was the end of it. It had been a year since and nothing much had happened.
If there were to be good showers, Arun Nagar, Bilal Estate, Tipu Nagar, Royal Nagar and other areas would come under sheet of water, he added.
Ward 49 Councillor Meena Loganathan said that encroachments prevented the flow of water in Sanganoor Pallam.
The Corporation had promised to initiate action but it did not. The last time some cleaning was done was more than two years ago.
In the East and South Zones, a number of natural drains awaited cleaning. If the Corporation did not take up the work on a war footing, Kothari Layout, Meena Estate, Neelikonampalayam, Damodharasamy Layout, Nesavalar Colony and other areas in Singanallur and Ondipudur would see inundation, said S.M. Samy, a Councillor from that area.
The Councillors also said that as most of the drain cleaning operation involved Rs. 10 lakh and above, it were the main office and the Council that were empowered to sanction the work.
Officials in the Corporation said that there had been demands from Councillors for desilting drains. Some of them could be genuine grievance but that could be ascertained only after a thorough verification, as desilting or canal widening work was one easily led to corruption, as the quantum of work could not be measured.
The officials said that they were at the job and the Corporation would initiate some action in the coming days.
