Drainage issue creates bad blood

Pithapuram: A minor dispute over major drain that passes through sixth, seventh and eighth wards in the town has snowballed into a major controversy and has the potential to affect the law and order in the town.

People of the sixth and seventh wards clashed with each other on Saturday. Municipal Commissioner M Rammohan and municipal divisional executive engineer Prabhakar intervened and tried to pacify the people of the two wards but in vain.
Alleging that residents of the seventh ward obstructed the drainage coming from the sixth ward, residents of the sixth ward blocked the road denying entry for those living in seventh ward to the sixth ward.

Sand bags and wooden poles were laid on the culvert making the sixth ward out of bounds for the people of seventh ward. The problem at one stage threatened to assume the caste colour.The municipal commissioner’s mediation proved to be of no use as the people of the sixth ward were not willing to budge an inch.

The once irrigation canal became a municipal drain as there is no considerable ayacut under it. Failure to remove silt from the drain rendered it to become a sewerage canal. Pleas by councillors to make the kutcha drain into a CC drain fell on deaf ears of the civic authorities. Two major hotels have been discarding their waste into the drain.

The million dollar question is how permission has been given to the hotels to run business without drainage facility. The civic authorities say that it would cost at least Rs 50 lakh to modernise the drain. The municipal commissioner expressed the civic body’s inability to spend such a huge sum.

Complaints of mosquito menace, children accidentally falling into the drain, drainage overflowing and spilling onto the roads were made earlier.

The people of the sixth ward deny access to seventh ward people to their area for the latter’s fault of blocking the drainage water from the homes in sixth ward.

The municipal commissioner and divisional executive engineer said that silt would be removed in the drain and maintained that a decision on the drain at high-level meeting should be taken. As excavators are found to be useless to desilt the drain, the silt would be removed manually, he added.

By Saride Nageswara Rao