Posted on May 30, 2016
The State Government has come under sharp criticism over slow pace of dredging of river Jhelum as against the targeted extraction of 50000 cubic meter material, the achievement has been less than 10000 cubic meter.
The dredger installed at Shivpora here has extracted around 8000 to 9000 cubic meter material during the dredging process, against 50000 cubic meters, in the past 25 days.
“In the name of dredging, authorities are wasting public money. The dredger has again stopped working for the past few days,” said an eyewitness.
The Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) department has awarded Rs 46 crore project to Kolkata-based dredging firm. A hydraulic dredge at Shivpora floats on water and pumps out material through a temporary pipeline to an offsite location.
Several visits by this reporter to the spot revealed that the machine often remains off due to technical snags.
“Presently, the machine is off for the past four days as it has developed some technical snag. The company is waiting for an engineer to arrive from Delhi or Kolkata to fix the problem,” said a labourer hired for the project by the company.
The official of Reach Company at Shivpora justified stoppage of work, saying: “It is a machine and there is lot of garbage in the river. The garbage often blocks the suction pipe and we have to stop the machine to clear it. It has developed some technical snag yesterday.”
Another senior official of Reach Company, wishing not to be named, said it takes around 15 minutes to stop the machine and another 15 minutes to run it after restart.
“The machine is extracting around 2000 cubic meters per day provided it runs continuously,” he said.
However, on spot visit and assessment of the extracted material reveals that not more than 8000 to 10000 cubic meters of material have been extracted from the Jhelum at Shivpora.
“If the machine is able to extract 2000 cubic meters in a day, it should have extracted 50000 cubic meters in the past twenty five days,” said locals.
They added that the contradictory figures are itself evident that the dredger is delaying dredging process. “The capacity of machine, as per officials is 2000 cubic meters per day but we have only around 8000 cubic meters extracted. It means there is deficit of 42000 cubic meters,” said Yasir Ahmad, a local.
When this reporter asked the officials of Reach Company why they have failed to fix the technical snag for the past four days, they said: “It is not four days but only one or two days. We have to call men and machinery from outside to fix the technical problems as these facilities (engineers and other tools) are not available here.”
They also claimed that state government is yet to provide them letter of allotment, for carrying the dredging.
“We have qualified the tender for this project. However, I&FC department has not given us any letter of allotment till date but still we are executing the project,” they said.
Javid Jaffar, I&FC Chief Engineer said that department has already expressed displeasure before the company over slow pace of work.
“I agree that progress is slow but it not also true that nothing is being done,” he added.
Source: Greater Kashmir
