The Margao Municipal Council (MMC) has braced itself for the rain onslaught for this season already. After an utter failure to control flooding right in front of the MMC building, the new Council is claiming that pre-monsoon work in all the wards of the MMC is on track. Tree cutting work, drain cleaning and other minor patch work of roads is presently underway.
The soured relations of Ex-Chairpersons Arthur D’Silva and Chief Officer of MMC, Navin S L coupled with badly coordinated work of agencies like JICA, Water Supply and Electricity department had put the monsoon preparedness of Margao in double jeopardy. Areas of Azad Nagari, Calconda, Borda, Vidhyanagar had overflowing drains and choked gutters throughout the season. The MMC had faced a complete man and machine failure and the problems had worsened. Even the street opposite the MMC building had flooded during the monsoons and the storm water drains overflowed.
Now the MMC is swearing on the work of drain cleaning and lots of work initiated soon after the council was formed. Chief Officer of the MMC, Deepali Naik informed that the pre-monsoon work of the town is being done with 55 workers. “The work has already been complete and the remaining work will be taken up quickly after we take in an additional 50 workers,” she explained. “The approval for the recruitment of the workers has already reached the MMC and the 50 workers will soon be brought on board and the remaining work will be completed in due time,” she added.
“Each councillor will get workers for nearly seven days in which he will be able to execute all pre-monsoon work,” Naik went on to say.
“The Rs 5 lakh allotted for pre-monsoon work may not be enough and the work will require much more than that. We will be using money from our municipal funds for the same and the order will be sent today,” Deepali was quoted.
Meanwhile, Councillor Raju Shirodkar of Ward 24 has informed that tree cutting work and drain cleaning work in his ward is presently going on. “We are getting 10 men every 10 days for tree cutting jobs and I have executed over 4 tree cuttings myself. A little more work still remains,” he said. “We needed the workers for a longer time as improvement of wards is still required,” he added.
Likewise, Tito Cardozo has placed a lot of emphasis on the work of the bad roads. “We have done lots of cleaning of drains in the last 6 months and little remains to be done still. The road tarring work of internal roads in my ward has begun. The work of Rs 2.5 crore will be inaugurated soon. The contractor has already started to patch up the dug up areas and the hot mix tar will be laid soon” he said.
The sewage contractors dug the underground channels for pipes and released the mud residue in the drains which blocked the rain water drains completely. The garbage dumped in drains and by side of the roads surfaced during the rain in the month of April.
Heavy showers resulted in flooding of the drains on the main roads and internal roads of Navelim and Shirvodem last year after which the sewage construction contractors got the water logging sorted.
Cardozo’s earlier ward (No 4) also encountered problems of water logging and digging in the middle of monsoons. Even after the order of District Collector to suspend digging work, the JICA and water supply contractors continued digging. Major digging work in two places was stopped by concerned citizens of the ward in three days during the monsoons. The failure of the MMC was visible last year after pre-monsoon work like tree-cutting and drain cleaning which had to be done and completed one month prior to the monsoons were incomplete.
The other wards had incidents of water logging on roads and threat from trees which are feared may fall after heavy rains is claimed to be curtailed this time round. Unlike the last council, the tree cutting machine of the Municipality is now working and the tree cutting gang has also been revived.
