Damage public property, pay BMC………..Pandurang Mhaske
Mumbai: The Birhanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has taken serious note of the damage caused to the underground water tunnel at Liberty Garden, Malad, by a local resident while digging a borewell.
On Tuesday, Ravindra Waikar, chairman, standing committee, directed the civic administration to take stringent action against the people responsible for damaging public property. “Such type of damage on the water tunnel is very expensive to fix, and city lost a lot of water due to the damage. Even a small crack can affect water supply to many areas,” Waikar said.
“To avoid a repeat puncture anywhere else in the city, the BMC has to prosecute the people responsible and claim the money required for the repair work from them.” The civic body is spending more than Rs10 lakh to repair the damaged tunnel.
The civic body’s water department has already lodged a police complaint against the people responsible for the damage to the 12-km water tunnel, which provides water to areas from Jogeshwari to Dahisar.
A complaint has been registered against Jagdish Bhajanlal Talreja and Vilas Ganpat Kadam. Kadam had hired the services of Talreja for digging the borewell. After they started work on the borewell, they realised that cracks had developed in the tunnel due to their digging work.
The duo got alarmed by the development and immediately sealed the crack in the tunnel using a steel peg and covered it with cement and concrete.
The areas between Jogeshwari and Dahisar will have to face major water cuts for the next six days as they BMC will take that much time to repair the water tunnel. The officials are finding it tough to carry out the repair work due to a steel peg, which was used to plug the leakage from the tunnel.
“We will have to re-excavate, and pass a camera through the tunnel to know the exact extent of damage in the area where the tunnel has been punctured. Only then we can repair it,” said Vinay Deshpande, chief hydraulic engineer.