North 24-Pgns: Officials told to identify areas for building permanent embankments
KOLKATA: The state Irrigation and Waterways department has asked its concerned officials to identify areas under Basirhat subdivision in North 24-Parganas where permanent concrete embankments need to be constructed to prevent inundation of the adjoining villages in the riverine belt.
State Irrigation and Waterways minister Partha Bhowmick recently visited the Sunderban area under Basirhat subdivision to take stock of the condition of embankments in the area. Considering the vulnerability of the age-old embankments to high tides, hostile weather conditions, etc the minister directed his department officials to take help of the district administration and identify areas based on their vulnerability where permanent embankments need to be constructed.
One-month time frame has been given to prepare a list of the embankments.
The minister during his visit was accompanied by Prabhat Kumar Mishra, Principal Secretary of his department, state Forest minister Jyotipriya Mallick, District Magistrate Sharad Kumar Dwivedi among others.In the entire Sunderban area, there is 3100 km of embankments built during the British era.
These embankments are damage prone and the engineers from the Irrigation department monitor their condition on a regular basis and take up repair work time to time to prevent breaching.
About 94 km of permanent embankment has been constructed since cyclone Aila had hit Bengal in the year 2009. The construction of such a permanent embankment is a very expensive affair and the allotment of funds that was promised by the Centre was much less than the desired amount.
"We want to demarcate the vulnerable areas and build such strong embankments to the best possible extent," a senior official of the Irrigation department said.
There is a gap between the old embankment and the permanent one, where the state government will be planting mangroves. During high tide water crosses the old embankment and enters into this
gap area.
