Deadline missed twice, BMC hires two contractors to finish Mithi River desilting

Usually, the BMC keeps a May 31 deadline to finish the desilting works. However, after the May 26 rainfall last month which resulted in flash flooding across multiple locations in the city, Municipal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani said that the city’s desilting works will be completed by June 7 since the cranes and JCBs could not enter the water bodies for two to three days following the heavy rains.

“For many days, we did not have any contractor to carry out the work because the appointed agencies stopped their work midway after the members of their management absconded. This happened when the overall progress of desilting stood little over 50 per cent and we had nearly half of the work to complete,” a senior official said.

The officials said that the civic authorities have appointed two new contractors to complete the desilting works and they are eyeing to finish the pre-monsoon work in 15 days.

As part of its pre-monsoon target, the BMC was supposed to remove 2.14 lakh Metric Tonnes (MT) of silt from Mithi River and so far 1.36 lakh MT has been removed.

“For every one per cent progress of work we need to remove silt equating 124 trucks. Getting such a huge logistical support is a challenge and still we are targeting to achieve 80-85% of the pre-monsoon desilting work by June 20-22 and the entire work is expected to be finished by the end of this month,” an official said.

Amid the ongoing Economic Offences Wing (EOW) investigation of the alleged Mithi River desilting scam, the appointed contractors for desilting the river went into hiding last month, leaving the civic authorities in a tight spot.

Every year during monsoon, the river works as a key network for the flow of rain water and incomplete desilting work may lead to overflow of rain water from the drains, resulting in waterlogging.

Furthermore, the BMC’s data shows that the BMC’s overall completion of desilting works stands at 84.82 per cent, which means a total of 8.24 lakh MT of silt has been removed against a target of 9.69 lakh MT.
At the island city, eastern and western suburbs desilting has been completed by 100 per cent, while for the minor drains in Mumbai, around 75.97 per cent has been achieved till date, which means 3.01 lakh MT of silt has been removed against a target of 3.96 lakh MT.