M'lore: Incessant Rains in Dist – Citizens Harried Due to Artificial floods, Road Blocks
Pics: Dayanand Kukkaje and Sphoorty Ullal
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (RS/SB)
Mangalore, Jul 6: The incessant rains that have lashed the district since past few days have caused inconvenience to residents in city and outskirts. While residents of some areas in the city faced the wrath of artificial floods with houses being partially inundated in water, on the other the vehicular traffic was blocked hours on end due to damaged roads, courtesy heavy rains. Following this, deputy commissioner in-charge Prabhakar Sharma has announced two days of holidays to the schools in the district.
Inconvenience due to artificial floods
The residents of layout in Subhash Nagar, Pandeshwar and Shivanagar in Attavar in the city were literally on a house arrest after their locality was inundated with water due to artificial floods. The water which did not find their way out from the area due to ineffective storm water drains moved into the houses of the people creating problems to undertake routine activities such as cooking. The children and office-goers stayed back home due to artificial floods that crippled their free movement outside the house.
The residents of the area complained that poor drainage system and clogged storm water drain are the main reasons for artificial floods. Suresh, a resident of the area said that despite several reminders during the summer season, Mangalore City Corporation failed to respond to our call. Now we are bearing the brunt of MCC’s negligence, he said. Vijaya, a house wife said that she was shocked to see the hall of her house inundated with water when she woke up in the morning.
Subhash Nagar, which comes under three MCC wards, has three corporators in-charge of the area. Two of the three coprorators, Muralidhar Bolar and Premananda Shetty, who arrived at the affected areas after telephone calls by the residents, however denied that poor maintenance of storm water drain was the reason behind the artificial floods. They said that as the area was close to the river, the higher water level prevented water from the area to pass through storm water drains into the river.
Further, a group of residents alleged that their corporator and former mayor Ashraf was not picking up their calls and has not responded to their grievances presented during the summer season.
Road block
The hillock on Pumpwell-Kankanady road collapsed due to incessant rains causing traffic block for few hours. Fire department had to be summoned to clear the road for the traffic.
On the city outskirts, the national highway was blocked for over five hours from Padil to B C Road, which was caused due to a large pothole on the road near Adyar. Among the traffic that queued on the road were vehicles carrying students, both school-goers and college-goers, office-goers and daily commuters. Due to the traffic block that lasted until noon students had to forego their classes. The pothole saw a temporary repair when local residents chipped in to help the passengers.