Multiple agencies took to the streets on Saturday to combat complaints of waterlogging even as their claims of having taken steps to pre-empt the problem stood exposed.
Public Works Department Minister Satyendar Jain and senior officials of the department conducted round-the-clock field inspections to monitor teams deployed to clear waterlogging at vulnerable points across Delhi.
South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) Mayor Shyam Sharma, accompanied by the Additional Commissioner, two deputy Commissioners of the Central and South Zones and a battery of other officers, came out during heavy rain to assess the status of waterlogging for more than three hours.
The PWD claimed its teams were active right since 5.30 am and started attending to waterlogging with the help of mobile maintenance vans in addition to deploying 202 portable pumps and 529 permanent pumps.
According to the PWD, 131 vans and 860 workers addressed 584 complaints till 1:00 pm on Saturday. The department said that clearance time of waterlogging varied from 15 minutes to an hour.
“Waterlogging work occurred because of flow of silt or sludge from the MCD drains, which are upstream of PWD drains. Despite the large claims of all the three Municipal Corporations that they had completed the pre-monsoon desilting work, it was seen that a lot of silt was coming from the municipal drains, thus reducing the capacity of the PWD drains, resulting in overflowing of the drains and causing waterlogging,” claimed a senior government official.
According to the MCDs, however, “substantial waterlogging on almost all major PWD roads” came to the fore exposing “the tall claims on the preparedness of the city government”.
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“There was no one from the PWD to tackle the situation or to address citizens’ woes,” Mr. Sharma said, adding that the Delhi government “has failed in the first test” when it came to the monsoon.
In a government statement, the PWD maintained that most of the locations from where water-logging was reported happened to be those handed over to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) for construction of phase-III and phase-IV. “The DMRC has not been maintaining these stretches properly, despite a lot of reminders from the PWD,” the statement read.
