The Deputy Chief Minister, Dr. Nirmal Singh today said the Government would put in place a comprehensive mechanism to address issues of water-logging and other situations associated with incessant rains. He said state of art equipment and machinery would be put in place to deal with such situations effectively.The Deputy Chief Minister was speaking at a meeting convened to discuss the issues related to the city sewerage and water-logging in Srinagar and Jammu city, besides other parts of the urban areas of the State and other related issues.Minister for Education, Mr. Naeem Akhtar, Minister for R&B, Syed Altaf Bukhari, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Ashraf Mir were also present. Commissioner/ Secretary Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Bipul Pathak, Commissioner Secretary Relief & Rehabilitation, Mr Dheeraj Kumar Gupta, Commissioner, Srinagar Municipal Corporation, Mr. Tufail Ahmed Mattoo and other senior officers were present in the meeting. During the meeting it was given out that the Government would take immediate remedial measures to overcome the water-logging being faced by the different areas of the Srinagar city as a consequence of incessant rains.
The meeting decided that state of art machinery would be brought in and pressed into service to ensure unclogging of choked drains and also service lines of the drainage & sewerage system of the State with the aim to provide relief to the people.
It was also decided that the machinery would be purchased within the shortest possible time in view of the freaky weather conditions leading to incessant rains and the consequential blockade of drains and water logging of the different areas of the State. The project cost of the augmentation scheme is Rs 112 crore and out of which Rs 50 crore shall be made available to the H&UDD Department by the Relief & Rehabilitation Department and the demand for rest of the funds shall be put up through Planning & Development Department.The areas to be brought under the augmentation and modernization of the drainage, sewerage system include SMC Mechanical City Drainage Division, SND 2nd Division Drainage, SMC City Drainage Civil Division, Sewerage and Drainage Circle Jammu besides the sewerage networks of UEED of Jammu and Kashmir and other Urban Local Areas of both the divisions as well as Lakes and Water Ways Development Authority.