Day after cave-in, road in Ludhiana closed for repair of damaged sewer line

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, September 22

A day after a portion of the road caved in near the Shastri Nagar railway crossing, one side of the road, from Hero Bakery Chowk towards the railway crossing, has been closed for the repair of the damaged old brick sewer line.

MC officials had on Wednesday said a portion of an old brick sewer line got damaged that led to the cave-in. The pit was around 20 feet deep and 25 feet long. An official of the O&M Branch of the MC said the repair work of the damaged brick sewer line would be completed in around a week.

On Thursday, Mayor Balkar Singh Sandhu and MC Commissioner Shena Aggarwal inspected the damaged road portion. Sandhu said it was a storm sewer line made of bricks and around 50 years old. He said he had also asked officials to float tenders for an upcoming project for the trenchless rehabilitation of existing storm water drains with a standalone structural technology in ABD areas at an estimated cost of Rs 82.22 crore.

Sharing concern over frequent cave-ins in the city, a former superintending engineer of the Department of Water Supply and Sanitation, Punjab, Jaswinder Singh, said earlier also, he had raised the demand that the civic body must carry out a survey of brick arch sewers in the city but nothing was done. He also asked whether these sewer lines were laid properly, as per the norms in the past.

He said: “If MC officials claimed that the sewer was old and outlived its life, where was the life of sewer defined. Nobody has shown any document to support their claim. If they are claiming that such sewers have become weak, why did the MC fail to take any timely action to replace such sewer lines?”

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