Vatva residents wade deep in drainage water

While residents in affluent pockets of the city were busy celebrating the recent spells of rain, families living in 18 colonies in Vatva were battling waist-deep rain water as well as sewage water for more than three days.

What's more, the area also had no electricity during the same period, even as pleas for help from civic authorities fell on deaf ears.

The homes of these residents of Vatva, hundreds in number, were invaded by water on Saturday evening. Over the next three days, the water showed no signs of receding, and power failure compounded the residents' woes. After repeated requests to the AMC, it was only on Wednesday that civic body officials visited the place for a solution.

One of the aggrieved residents, Nazirbhai, went to the AMC's office in Danapith to make a representation to Surendra Baxi, leader of the Opposition in the AMC. He confirmed that he had come there to seek help from officials, as they had suffered without any respite so far.

Nazirbhai said that a large part of the affected area is inhabited by the minority community. "We have been living without electricity for three days, and in waist-deep sewage water. Even the ward office was waterlogged, and the officials had to use a tractor to get in.

While some areas were cleaned with the help of fighter machines, the rest are still suffering as before," he complained.

According to Nazirbhai, such was the apathy of civic officials that the residents themselves had to pool in money for the diesel used by the fighter machine (used to suck in water). "We had to spend around Rs1,000 in the last two days, on diesel for the machines," he said.