Even as a number of stormwater drains have been reportedly desilted ahead of the monsoon, Chennai Corporation officials have been unable to complete work on a few stretches that continue to be bottlenecks for free flow of water in the event of a flood.
A number of residents affected by the floods last December have now begun requesting zonal-level Corporation officials to desilt such drains.
Residents of areas such as Mylapore said officials were pointing to the ban on manual scavenging for the delay in desilting the drains.
However, official sources said the actual cause of delay on some of the key stretches was the shortage of manpower with contractors, who bagged multiple contracts for desilting stormwater drains.
A few contractors had bagged more than 200 contracts for works to desilt stormwater drains. But such contractors have fewer than five workers carrying out the work at any given point of time.
Unable to reveal this information to flood-affected residents, officials have started misleading them, claiming that the ban on manual scavenging was the cause of delay.
For instance, a 400-metre stretch of stormwater drain on P.S. Sivasamy Salai, near Vivekananda College, has not been desilted.
The stretch of the arch-shaped drain, which was designed during the British era, and measures 4 feet in width and 5 feet in height, has not been desilted for over 10 years.
Many stretches around P.S. Sivasamy Salai were desilted a few weeks ago. However, many wards around the stretch that have been desilted are also likely to be affected by the floods owing to the bottlenecks created in the drain along P.S. Sivasamy Salai.
Tracing the drains
Similarly, many officials were not aware of the existence of old arch drains constructed by the British before Independence, sources claim.
Manholes on many of the drains have been completely closed due to the unscientific re-laying of roads over the past years, making it all the more difficult, they said.
For example, a 95-year-old retired employee with experience in Metrowater infrastructure, helped Corporation officials to trace the arch drain along Conran Smith Road during the floods last year.
The manhole was five metres beneath the road surface.
After civic body officials broke open the manhole on the drain, the flood waters receded in 30 minutes in the area last December, sources added.
Official sources claim shortage of manpower to be the actual cause for
delay in desilting
