Chattogram City Corporation starts cleaning canals and ditches to reduce water-logging in the city
Chattogram City Corporation (CCC) has started cleaning canals and drains to alleviate waterlogging. The work started in East Sholashahar and Chandgaon wards of the city. The cleaning department is supervising these activities with the help of the mechanical branch of the corporation.
Sudip Basak, the supervising engineer of CCC, said the canal and drain cleaning activities will be carried out with the City Corporation’s own workforce and equipment to alleviate waterlogging.
On the first day of this work, garbage cleaning has started from Birja Khal and Dom Khal of Bahaddarhat near Omar Ali Matabbar Road in East Sholashahar. This work will be continuing in the future.
Morshedul Alam Chowdhury, deputy chief cleaning officer of the city corporation, said that although there were 57 canals in the city, the Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) was working on only 36 of them.
Apart from this, many drains remain outside the scope of their work. Due to not being cleaned of these, waterlogging occurs in the city repeatedly.
The city dwellers have been blaming the city corporation for the misery caused by this. In this situation, the mayor Rezaul Karim Chowdhury has given instructions to clean the canals and drains outside the CDA project.
According to CCC’s sanitation department, the army’s 34 Engineer Construction Brigade implements a major CDA project to alleviate waterlogging.
Due to this 47.736 Billion Dollars project, the city corporation had stopped removing waste and mud in the big drains and canals for a long time. Although the CDA project is in progress, waterlogging occurs every year during the monsoon season. The city dwellers were blaming the negligence of the CDA and the city corporation for this.
Sources further said that the city corporation has recently decided to clean the canals and drains outside the CDA project’s scope. Counselors of 41 wards have compiled a list of canals and ditches. According to the list, they have identified 598 parts of the canal and drain sewer.
In August 2017, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved the CDA’s waterlogging project.
Fieldwork on the project implementation began in April of the following year, still ongoing. Since the project’s approval, the city corporation has stopped the removal of garbage from canals and drains in the city.
