AGARTALA, December 21 (TIWN): Agartala has no underground or piped sewerage system and as a result, wastewater from households, commercial storm water drains and ultimate flown to Bangladesh through river Howrah (water source of Agartala) without any treatment. Health experts of the state confirmed that growth of gastro-entities in Agartala and it’s periphery is mainly because of water only.

Although there are numerous storm water drains and two rivers flowing through it, city suffers from recurrent flood problems. During normal rainfall of about 3-4 hours, the central part of Agartala gets flooded. As per the statistics, around 24 percent of the population is affected by floods. Although there is adequate fall in most parts of the city to support a gravity drainage system, some parts of the city are on low-lying and drainage problem is more evident.      

It is to be mentioned here that the ongoing construction work of cover drains are creating problems to the people of the city and the ongoing construction work also creating traffic jams in the city roads.

Meanwhile, speaking on the developments of construction of drains and drainage facilities of city Agartala, the Mayor informed that AMC has been allotted Rs. 200 crore under 13th Finance Commission grant and utilizing the same all the 35 wards and 6 new Development Committees (DC) within the jurisdiction of AMC will have cover drains. “At present we have 18 cover drains and more are likely to come in near future”, he said. The additional drains, though, are named feeder drains where main cover drains will pour its water and wastes.

Apart from the central grant, another separate project (fully funded by the state government), for making cover drains, isin the pipeline and in the course of its implementation, number of shops will be removed from the street sides. “In the initial phase, from Orient Chowmahani to Rajib Bhawan we will lay cover drains and the entire area will have double storied buildings”, he informed. The shopkeepers, now operating at west side of Children Park, will be brought to the first floor of the said facility. In addition, the entire area situated between East Agartala Police Station (East PS) to Mahanam Angan Ashram will also be provided with cover drain facility.

But the construction of these cover drains resulted in the havoc in major areas of the Agartala city. Residents of the city are facing a serious water logging problems for the last few years. As all the wastes of the streets are pull down on the streets and water logging creates. The situation gets worse during rainy season as they had to wade through at least knee­ deep water. A spell of hours heavy rains had cause chaos in the city exposing civic bodies, lack of preparedness to address the problem of water logging. While DWS had blamed AMC for flooding of streets, the civic body had held DWS responsible for the same.