Mumbai floods amidst BMC's tall claims

Friday’s pre-monsoon showers in the city took the civic administration by surprise and literally washed away their claims of being monsoon ready.

Just a single night’s downpour flooding the streets in central, eastern and western parts of the city was enough to bring to light the reality behind the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) recent claims of having completed 94 per cent of desilting work.

Laxman Vhatkar, director engineering services, BMC, insisted that the flooding in the city was not due to clogging of the major drains in the city. “The work of cleaning side drains and minor drains not being at the ward level has lead to flooding in certain areas. It may be possible that these drains are clogged due to the garbage flowing in the drains during first heavy showers. However, we will ask the contractors to clean those drains again for the free flow of rain water”, said Vhatkar.

However, it’s not just the work at the ward level that is causing trouble to the city. The water logging after just the first showers could also be because the work on two flood-control measures — nullah desilting and construction of two storm water pumping stations — is behind schedule.

Work of two storm water pumping stations at Worli (Love Grove and Cleveland Bunder) to reduce water logging in flood-prone areas of Dadar (west), Parel, Chinchpokli and Currey Road has been delayed by a year and is not likely to get done for another year. “The work of pumping stations will still take a while, as the amount of construction work that needs to be done is very high. It might get over by the next monsoon,” said Vhatkar.

The delay in finding plots to dump silt has also delayed the desilting work.