Bhubaneswar: The Drainage Division of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is all set to have more effective action in order to execute the drainage mechanism with creation of three sub-divisions and posting of more staff by the State Government.
On August 1 last, the Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) Department in an office order posted four Assistant Engineer /Junior Engineers to the Drainage Division BMC. After the posting the resource persons with the Drainage Division would be taking their responsibilities of the sub-divisions for efficient work under the division.
While the Drainage Executive Engineer (EE) will head the overall operations of the division, one Assistant Executive Engineer (AEE) will head respective sub-division. Two AEs or JEs will be placed under the AEE to execute the engineering activities in each sub-division. The AEEs and their AE/JE teams are assigned specific drainage channels for better management of the channels.
The three drainage sub-divisions of the civic body will be called North, South-West and South East. While Pradip Duria is the EE of the division, Madan Mohan Mishra, Goutam Charan Das and Ajit Bhusan Das will be in-charge of the three sub-divisions, respectively.
The 12 drainage channels of city would be around 100 km of length and the secondary and tertiary drains would be around 400 km in length. All the 12 drainage channels are aligned from West to East and are situated in an arrayed layout (North to South) and perpendicular to Gangua `nullah’ which works as the carrier of the city’s drainage output and deposits it with Daya river, around 20 km away from the city’s outskirts.
The civic body proposed that the 12 major natural drains or drainage channels would be managed by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Drainage Division as earlier they were under the management of Water Resources Department.
The Drainage Division was created in BMC in 2016 after a formal proposal was sent to the H&UD Department from BMC on August 7, 2015. The BMC Council meeting on June 24, 2015 had proposed a Drainage Division with one EE, three AEEs, 10 AE/JE and other ministerial staff. However, during 2016 between June and October one EE, three AEEs and 2 AE/JEs joined BMC. The engineering staffs were not adequate enough to manage the work. With four more engineers joining the team, the work would be easier to be done.
The process of the creation of a Drainage Division started long ago. In fact, a meeting on “storm water drainage system of Bhubaneswar’’ was held on September 12, 2014 under the chairmanship of Development Commissioner and it was decided to create a separate Urban Drainage Division to maintain and implement storm water drainage projects in Bhubaneswar.
In another meeting “Comprehensive Drainage Improvement in Bhubaneswar City’’ on April 23 2015 under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary, Odisha, it was decided that Water Resources Department would vest the responsibilities of all natural drainage channels within BMC area with the civic body to ensure convergence in regular maintenance and their upkeep. It was also decided to create a resource pool by having engineers on deputation from Water Resources Department.
In another meeting held on May 16, 2015 on “Comprehensive Drainage Improvement in Bhubaneswar City’’ under the chairmanship of the Principal Secretary, Water Resources Department, it was decided that the existing 12 natural drainage channels shall be vested in BMC forthwith.
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