Tarun letters

Clean sewer pipelines on daily basis

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Millions of people from all over the world visit our country every year and a majority of them due to our religious importance leading to spirituality. The basic teaching of every religion is to clean your inner-self. If we follow the same formula and keep our roads and streets clean, the problem of water-logging will automatically disappear. If we employ workers to clean roads and streets on a daily basis, they should also be asked to clean sewer pipelines. They should also bear in mind what Martin Luther King Jr said years ago, “If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep street as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote novel.” Now, the second villain in this dirty movie is the local town planning department, which allows residences to be converted into hotels in narrow lanes of the city. Just imagine what will happen to underground sewerage pipeline connected to a residence meant for five persons converted into a hotel with a capacity of 30 persons. There is no dearth of such hotels in the city.

Naresh Mohan Johar

Segregate wet garbage from dry one

Water-logging becomes a nuisance for city residents and commuters during the monsoon season. Sometimes, there are big potholes in roads and lids of most sewerage systems also are missing which are an open invite to accidents. Commuters have to drive their vehicles in knee-deep water, resulting in mishaps. Some parts of our cities have drainage systems that are almost too old. They are not fit for handling high pressure of rainwater that flows through them, resulting in water-logging. Then, places such as underpasses have no slope for water to flow out, so it just accumulates there on both sides. The accumulated water starts stinking after a few days and becomes a breeding-ground for mosquitoes. Storm water is the technical town planning term for excess rainwater. In an environment where there were no buildings and pavements, for example in a forest, the excess rainwater merely seeps into the soil. But in a city, because of concrete surfaces, storm water cannot seep into the ground naturally. Hence, it needs an outlet to flow out. But many of these outlets in Indian cities are choked by garbage or silt. Therefore, the storm water finds no way to flow out and collects right there. A solution to the problem of water-logging lies in segregating wet garbage from dry one. If people start separating garbage, it will take care of the problem to a large extent. Start segregating waste in your respective homes before disposing it off. The dry waste such as empty cans and glass bottles can be sold. Whenever you dump garbage anywhere, it is bound to find its way into drains, choking them.

AMARJIT KALSI

Water-logging is a perennial problem in most parts of India, more so in Jalandhar as far as I can remember. I used to live in Adarsh Nagar, Jalandhar, till 1983 and even then during monsoon a heavy shower would flood the streets leading to water-logging. The Kapurthala adda near Adarsh Nagar remained under ankle-deep water for many hours after heavy rain, so was the scene at other chowks. European and American cities also experienced some water-logging and flooding but only when there is a hurricane or typhoon as occurred in Houston, Texas, in August 2005 because of hurricane Katrina. But our beleaguered cities experience such problems even after some heavy showers. The problems are with our road structures and drainage systems. The roads are not properly laid and carpeted resulting in attrition and dilapidated condition resulting in many potholes causing accidents and even death. One wonders if it’s potholes in the road or road in the potholes. The drainage system is in the worst condition. There is no desilting and clearing of the sewage pipes regularly resulting in overflowing of the sewer through manholes. The municipalities and corporations don’t pay much attention to such people friendly works. The leaders are only interested in politicking and elections to grab power by hook or by crook.The citizens also need to do their duties by properly disposing off the trash from their houses and localities.

JS Wadhwa