Contractors pay for employing kids

V A Sawant, executive engineer in charge of eastern suburbs said action had been taken against the two contractors as the corporation had strictly warned contractors not to employ children. Children are employed to clean manholes which adults may not be able to enter as they are very narrow.

The corporation has also penalised 26 other contractors for not being able to complete drain cleaning work on time. Four contractors were fined in the city, 15 in the eastern suburbs and seven in the western suburbs. A total of Rs five lakh was recovered from the contractors. The highest amount of Rs 30,000 was recovered from Preeti Constructions in the western suburbs.

Deputy engineer, solid waste management, A Pushparajan, also in charge of the cleaning process in the city, informed that the delay had occurred primarily because the contractors did not employ enough labourers to do the job. Some of them did not start their work in time and hence could not meet the deadline, he said. Executive engineer P N Bhatt in charge of western suburbs explained that contractors are given a target for each week.

If they fail to complete what is specified for two to three weeks at a stretch, they are issued a show-cause notice and given a chance to improve their work. If they fail to improve their work, they are penalised, apart from degrading and also black-listing if the need arises. However, no contractor has been black-listed so far this year. The officials claimed that around 80 per cent of the work of cleaning of major and minor drains in Mumbai had been completed, and the rest would be completed by June 20.

But a visit to some of the major drains in the city , such as the one at Majaswadi, proves otherwise.

They identified some areas which were likely to be flooded during the rains. These include Hindmata Cinema, King Circle, MHADA colony at Kandivali, Shashtri Nagar at Goregaon, Azad Nagar at Andheri, as well as some low-lying areas in the city.