City flood projects to be over by Nov: PWD

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 8: Stricture from GDD seems to have its effect on State PWD that now says that it is going to complete by this month all urban flood mitigation projects that have been overrunning their target schedules.

The amount that GDD has spent in dribs and drabs to get rid of artificial floods in Guwahati could have been enough to construct an alltogether a new city. However, despite spending a huge amount, the problem of urban flood mitigation in the city is far from being over. There has been no holistic approach to solve the problem ones and for all. The successive governments at Dispur only took some short-term projects to solve the problems of some specific localities, instead of trying to solve the problem as a whole.

Some of GDD’s urban flood mitigation projects are being implemented by GMC and some by PWD. PWD has many projects that have overrun target schedules. When asked on the reasons for such delays, the department blames it on rains. How come there be monsoon season in Assam without rains?

Of late, GDD has asked PWD to complete all projects that have overrun their target schedules. Talking to this reporter, a top PWD official said: “We’re set to complete all projects that have overrun their target schedules by this month. However, there’re some projects that were started in fiscal 2016-17. They’re scheduled to be completed by March 2018. We’ll meet the target schedules of the new projects.”               

According to sources, as many as 53 urban flood mitigation projects with an estimated cost of Rs 65 crore have been underway in four PWD divisions in Guwahati.

“As many as 24 projects were completed by August 2017 and works of 29 other projects have been underway. We’ve distributed the works among the four PWD divisions of Guwahati. Guwahati City Division-I has 22 projects with an estimated cost of Rs 1562.30 lakh. Nine of the projects are still to be completed. As many as 14 of the 17 projects with an estimated cost of Rs 3271.51 lakh in Guwahati City Division II are still to be over.  Guwahati City Division III has three more projects to be completed. It had nine projects with an estimated cost of Rs 521 lakh under it,” the sources said, and added: “North Guwahati State Road Division has three of the five projects with an estimated cost of Rs 1070.81 lakh to be completed.” PWD is now optimistic of completing the remaining 29 projects within this month.