Muzaffarpur municipal Corporation to develop new drainage system

MUZAFFARPUR: Taking a lesson from massive waterlogging after heavy rains in August and September this year, the Muzaffarpur Municipal Corporation (MMC) has mooted a plan to develop a new drainage system to cater to the drainage rudiments of the city over the next 3-4 years.
As per the proposed plan, a 15km-long drainage network will be constructed from Sikandarpur locality to Manika Man (a lake) in Musahari block of the district.A nod was given by the Permanent Standing Committee (PSC0 of the civic body in its special meeting convened at Amrapali auditorium on Tuesday. All 49 ward councillors gave their consent to the porposal.
Deliberating on the new driange plan, Muzaffarpur mayor Suresh Kumar said, “Since waterlogging is a big challenge for us in making the city smart, we have decided to construct a system which can serve our drainage need for the next 30 to 40 years. Since, the Manika Lake joins Burhi Gandak river, it is easy for us to pump water out of the town. Hence this plan has been charted out with an estimated cost of Rs 183crore. This money will be incurred from the Smart City project,” he said.
Kumar said the bidding process for selection of agency for construction of storm water drainage and outfall drain will be finalised by November end. “We have drawn a short, medium and long-term plan for the drainage system. The short-term plan will be finalised by March next year, while for the medium and long-term plan, the work order will be issued by May,” he said.
On being asked whether the old drainage system like Dadar, Sikandarpur nulla and others would be left out, he said those would be cleaned and used for better discharge of water accumulated in the civic area. The mayor said that work will be also initiated for removal of encroachments from drainages along all major thoroughfares.
“We have assigned the engineers of the MMC and tax-collectors in the wards to prepare a detailed report about the illegal constructions over the drainage apart from encroachment of roads. A massive anti-encroachment drive will soon be launched to get the encroached land free,” Suresh said.