Agartala, October 23 (TIWN): Incessant rain during rainy days raised question about the drainage system and sanitation facilities. Recently there are 18 cover drains in the city which had turned the city into hell.

Meanwhile, while 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 utilisingthe same all the 35 wards and 6 new Development Committees (DC) within the jurisdiction of AMC will havecover drains. “At present we have 18 cover drains and more are likely to come in near future”, he said. Theadditional drains, though, are named feeder drains where main cover drauinjs 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 Choumuhoni to Rajib Bhawan we will lay cover drains and the entire area will havedouble 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 PoliceStation (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 Agartala has been 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.

However, AMC officials and ruling party office-bearers argue that the plans are designed to meet situations arising out of a rain spell of one inch. They hold that the system can withstand rains of one inch and not beyond. If the rainfall is more than one inch in a day, waterlogging is inevitable, they argue.