Centre approves fund for KMC’s drainage master plan

Kolkata: The Central government is learnt to have approved funds for Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) for a project to improve the city’s drainage network to prevent flooding.

Funds amounting to Rs 500 crore approximately will be disbursed to KMC over the next five years in instalments of Rs 100 crore. The approval for the fund was sought at a meeting in Delhi last week where the civic body laid out its plans for the project. Presently, the KMC is gearing up to float tenders for the project which will involve building new drainage pumping stations, upgrading old ones and building retention tanks that can hold rainwater.

It is learnt that the civic body’s drainage department was working on a master plan that seeks to deal with waterlogging in areas which have become infamous for inundation over the years and most of these lie in northern, central and eastern parts of the city. Some of these are Thanthania, MG Road, Kidderpore, Behala, Mukundapur, Kasba.

The plan is to implement a kind of system that will not only give out warnings in sync with the weather forecast but also intimate the civic body of the areas that may witness waterlogging in case of heavy rainfall due to cyclonic weather. This will also work as a disaster management system since people may need to be evacuated from areas where there are old and dilapidated buildings which have been marked by the KMC as ‘dangerous buildings” since these pose a risk of collapse after heavy rainfall. The grant will also be utilised to excavate ponds, some of which have been filled up over the years, it was learnt.

Sources said that the nod for approval for the project is a positive sign since the Centre had earlier refused funds for the Ghatal master plan for West Midnapore for which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had been requesting the Union government for long.