The ongoing stormwater drain (SWD) project, though has gained pace in the recent past, is continuing to face administrative and political hurdles.
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed ire over the slow pace of the contractor L&T, under the supervision of the Public Health and Municipal Engineering Department (PHMED), at the Collectors’ conference recently and also warned of changing the contractor.
However, the project in the past three months has picked up pace from covering about 250 metres of construction using pre cast structures in November to 750 metres per day. The agreement was for at least one kilometre per day.
“When the Chief Minister toured the city in November, the pace of work was slow. Over the past three months the pace picked up and most of the total work done so far has been done in this period,” Public Health and Municipal Engineering Department Superintending Engineer N. Srinivasulu told The Hindu . “The contractor is also increasing pre-cast manufacturing capacity and in a couple of months we will achieve laying one kilometre drain per day,” he said.
Also Mayor Koneru Sridhar in a recent inspection found that at many areas the drain work was started but abandoned.
He asked the authorities concerned to see that the work was completed before summer.
Meanwhile lack of vision, political opposition in dealing with encroachers, delay in shifting of electricity poles and lack of sufficient man power became day to day problems for the executors.
‘Path diverted’
“Recently a corporator forced the workers not to remove an encroachment by his relative and divert the path of the drain. Though it was not his ward we had to do it due to pressure but faced problem with the local corporator later. Such hindrances are faced often,” an engineer said on condition of anonymity.
In addition the electricity department is not acting quickly in shifting poles in the path of the proposed drains, the engineer said.
So far, about 20% of the 443-km project has been finished. The work began in November 2016 and the deadline for completion is November 2018.
