Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The department and authorities in Guwahati waste crores of rupees on desilting and renovating faulty drains that do not serve their intended purpose. The drainage works done every year in Guwahati are indeed a futile exercise.
The drains in Guwahati are under the jurisdiction of the GMC and the PWD. In greater Guwahati, the GMC has 553 drains under it, and the PWD has 297 drains.
Both the agencies have all along been desilting, silt-trapping with silt removal systems, constructing basin drains, RCC box stormwater drains, etc. However, none of their works have been able to prevent artificial floods that ravaged the city every year. Master plans for the drainage in Guwahati were drafted in 1971, 1992, and 2009. But the execution of the master plans has been abysmally slow.
Speaking to The Sentinel, a retired PWD engineer stated, "The designs of the drainage system in Guwahati are outdated and based on the population patterns of previous decades. The population of Guwahati was around 43,000 in 1950, and now it is estimated at 14 lakh. Additionally, the drainage systems in Guwahati lack scientific design. Most of the drains have no continuity, terminating without proper outfalls. There is no systematic approach to maintain drains. Such faulty drains cannot solve the problem of waterlogging in the metropolitan city."
Another retired engineer of GMC said, "A major construction defect in drains in the city is concretisation of the beds of drains along with their side walls. Such drains with concretised beds cannot absorb water. If there are any blockages downstream, the water flow from the smaller drains obstructs the flow of water, which will overflow and flood the roads. Apart from these, most of the smaller drains connect perpendicularly with other major drains. with other major drains. In such cases, the flow of water from the smaller drains obstructs the flow of water from the major drains to a significant extent and creates waterlogging. Joining smaller drains with major drains should be in curves towards the flow of the major drains, not against it. In some cases, the beds of smaller drains are lower than those of major drains, leading to the reverse flow of water.
The problems of choking drains with plastic materials and garbage are always there. Destruction of water bodies and unplanned construction of houses lead to waterlogging in Guwahati. Areas like Lokhra, Kahikuchi, Boragaon, etc., were lowlands. However, over the past few years, buildings have bobbed up there through earth filling, without caring for any proper drainage systems. Agencies like the GMC and GMDA should have kept specific lands for drainage before giving permission for the construction of buildings. This lapse on the part of the two agencies has led the construction of drains without specific widths. And the problem will be very critical in the days ahead.
A section of the local people says that they only see labourers constructing drains in the absence of engineers and supervisors. This practice leads to faulty constructions, which lead to waterlogging and other problems. Even the labourers cleaning and desilting drains often leave stretches that cause waterlogging.
An umbrella agency is urgently needed to address all issues affecting Guwahati, including the drainage system, due to a significant lack of coordination among the various departments and agencies involved.
Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Kaushik Rai has been inspecting drains under the GMC frequently. He also agreed that the cleaning of drains is not as it should have been. He said that the department would fix accountability for the respective in-charges of zones in the event of improper cleaning of drains.
It is high time for Guwahati to conduct a scientific study of its drainage system and to reconstruct and realign the drains, rather than spending crores of rupees each year on drain maintenance.
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