With monsoon a month away BMC's 6 crore robot fails to de-silt nullahs

With just a month left before monsoon arrives in the city, the BMC is struggling to complete the de-silting work, especially in the underground drains in the island city. Despite their plans of using technology this year, the robots are unable to remove the silt and the work is stuck.

Last year, the BMC had purchased one such robot at a cost of around Rs 6cr, which could remove the silt from stretches of the underground nullahs that hadn't been cleaned in decades. After conducting a survey of the underground nullahs in the island city, with the help of cameras, civic officials believed that certain stretches contained toxic gases and would be risky to send manual labourers in them. The network of these underground nullahs runs to more than 500 km.

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Civic officials from the Storm Water Drains (SWD) department said that the robots (a device with a suction attachment, which is controlled with a remote) were unable to do the job and they are now trying to find equipment with a higher capacity. "The underground drains were made during the British era and the manholes were designed for manual labourers. The silt comprises construction material, which has hardened over time. We tried the robot this year, but the machine is small and isn't able to get the silt out," said an official from SWD department. He said that while the BMC owns one such robot, the contractor appointed for the job has two.

Barring the underground drains, data provided by the BMC indicated that as far as major nullahs are concerned, until April 30, of the 3.35 lakh tonnes of silt, 1.48 lakh tonnes have been removed. For minor nullahs, of the 2.06 lakh tonnes of silt, only 41,925 tonnes have been removed. Civic officials said that of the 276 km of major nullahs and 438 km of minor nullahs, only around 35 per cent of the stretch has been de-silted so far.

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The matter was taken up for discussion during the monthly meeting held with the municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta on Saturday. "The commissioner has asked the SWD department officials to expedite the work. He has also asked them to use cameras to ensure that the channel from the flooding spot to the pumping station is clear, in order to prevent any water logging," said another official, who attended the meeting.

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