Civic activists blame PMC for the floods

Civic activists blame PMC for the floods

PUNE: City-based civic activists have put the blame on the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the district administration for floods in Mula-Mutha rivers. They have also blamed the citizens for carrying out encroachments with the help of careless, short-sighted bureaucrats and corrupt Irrigation Department officials.

Sujit Patwardhan, founder of the Parisar NGO, Narindra Chugh, Jala Biradari’s Maharashtra President and civic activist Sarang Yadwadkar have written letters to Pune Municipal Commissioner and Pune District Collector asking them to take steps to mitigate the impending disaster. 

They mentioned in the letter, “This is solely because the rivers are getting strangled due to encroachments by the greedy and ignorant citizens, careless and short-sighted bureaucrats, corrupt, rotten Irrigation Department officials, utterly selfish and reckless consultants and the visionless politicians who are incessantly after ‘development’ even at the cost of lives.”

They wrote in the letter that “We Punekars are on the brink of an unprecedented situation. The Blue Line of Mutha is defined at 60,000 cusecs, but we are running helter-skelter in panic and confusion at a discharge of 45-50,000 cusecs.” 

They further mentioned that “We are practically sitting on a live bomb with six rivers flowing through the city (Mula, Mutha, Pawana, Indrayani, Ramnadi and Devnadi). Six dams on the immediate upstream (Panshet, Khadakwasla, Warasgaon, Temghar, Mulshi and Pawana) and the saucer-shaped topography with hills all around. With all this, we are at more risk of flooding than even Chennai.” 

They said that “The unplanned development is responsible for floods and added that we have built roads on the riverbeds, we have poured millions of truckloads of debris in the riverbeds, we have laid several kilometres of huge sewers in riverbeds, we allow car parks, chowpatty, circus and fun fares on the riverbeds, we also construct Metro and Metro stations on riverbeds.”

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