Even though the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has declared that it has completed over 90 per cent of the pre-monsoon nullah desilting work, it is lagging behind in monsoon preparedness with
Even though the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has declared that it has completed over 90 per cent of the pre-monsoon nullah desilting work, it is lagging behind in monsoon preparedness with regards to roads and tree pruning.
There are currently a total of about 53,000 trees in the city, which are either dead and need to be pulled down immediately, or are in precarious conditions and require trimming. Of these, 61 extremely dangerous trees have not yet been pulled down or trimmed. Besides, about 20,500 trees are yet to be pruned. Until now, the BMC has only been able to deal with 510 dead trees and managed to trim about 32,000 trees.
Meanwhile, work on about 135 roads, which the BMC had expected to complete before the monsoon, will not be done within the next 20 days. Work on these roads will spill over to the post monsoon slot. Besides this, work on around 120 junctions will commence only after the monsoons are over, by October this year.
“We will ensure all roads are brought to the safe status before the monsoon starts, even though we will not be able to complete all work on them,” said a senior civic official who did not wish to be named. However, the civic body has been doing well on the nullah desilting front. A total of 94.5 per cent of the de-silting work in the two major rivers of Mumbai —Mithi river and Vakola river — has been completed. Also, around 89 per cent of the work in major nullahs has been completed, but 50 per cent of the work on minor nullahs is yet to be completed. “In many instances, we had to do the desilting work repeatedly, because the local residents throw garbage in the nullahs,” he said.
