Mumbai: Mithi river desilting inches at snail’s pace

A worker manually removes floating plastic items from Mithi River. File Pic/Ashish Raje

The desilting of Mithi River has inched forward at a snail's pace over the past week with 63.83 per cent of the work completed, as against the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) target of 85 per cent work before the monsoon. A week ago, the BMC had completed 61 per cent of the work, after which the civic body intended to reach the 85 per cent completion mark over the course of two weeks. Against a target of 214,315.49 metric tonnes, BMC has removed only 136,798.05 metric tonnes of silt from the Mithi River.

Similarly, work on desilting of minor nullahs across the city has also shown hardly any progress, and is completed up to 75 per cent, up from 71 per cent, over the past week. The civic body has removed 301,132.92 metric tonnes of silt from minor nullahs, against a target of 396,495.70 metric tonnes. Meanwhile, after a lull in rainfall, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has indicated heavy to very heavy rain for Mumbai until June 16, with an orange alert issued for tomorrow.

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A senior civic official said that two additional contractors have been roped in to complete the desilting work in time. During the review meeting conducted by Municipal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani on Monday, officials of the Storm Water Drains (SWD) Department pointed out that due to the amount of silt in Mithi, 124 truckloads of silt equals only 1 per cent of the work.

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