Irked over choked sewerage, SAD councillor cleans manhole

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Malout, April 17

Irate over choked sewerage, SAD councillor Ashok Bajaj accompanied by some area residents and party leaders on Wednesday cleaned a manhole on the Gaushala road here to lodge a symbolic protest against officials of the Water Supply and Sewerage Board.

Notably, on Tuesday, Bajaj had uploaded a video on Facebook, alleging that sewerage board officials were least bothered about the problem and announced to start manual scavenging himself on Wednesday in protest.

“The SDO of the sewerage board is giving lame excuses to clean the choked sewerage. However, area residents have been complaining me about the problem. When the state government did not release funds and failed to send some machines for the cleaning purposes, I decided to clean the sewer manhole on my own. This is just to shame the authorities,” he said.

Meanwhile, when contacted, Rakesh Mohan Makkar, SDO, Water Supply and Sewerage Board, Malout, said, “There is some problem of sewerage, but today’s protest was a political gimmick of the councillor. He (Ashok Bajaj) had come to my office along with someone to get a no objection certificate (NoC) for some house. The consumer had agreed to pay the defaulting bill amount, but Bajaj stopped him and I refused to issue the NOC. It irked Bajaj, who lodged a protest on Wednesday.”

“Further, there has been a power failure for the past two days due to the prevailing weather. On Wednesday, some sewermen had gone to clean the manhole, but Bajaj, who was present there, refused saying that he would now clean it on his own. Even streets are now waterlogged due to rain,” he added.