Demands augmentation of the drain infrastructure across Jhelum
Srinagar, 27 April: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Youth Wing Coordinator for Central Kashmir, Zuhaib Yousuf Mir has expressed deep concern over the fact that a few hours of rainfall triggers a flood like situation in the Srinagar city.
In a statement Zuhaib Mir expressed dismay over the sluggish execution of the flood project. He said that there is a dire need of removing the deadlock hampering the Jhelum flood mitigation plan, and the government should actively and urgently clear it.
He added that despite claiming to have spent crores of rupees on flood mitigation measures, the situation on the ground is dismal.
While referring to recent media reports Zuhaib expressed surprise that a fund allocation of Rs.114 crores has been released by the Central Government in March 2022. A tender of Rs. 229 Crores was floated by Irrigation & Flood Control Department, Kashmir in October 2022. However, after 5 months, the tender got cancelled.
It has been reported that a new tender is ready, but awaiting instructions from the higher ups which clearly shows that the bureaucrats are not taking the Srinagar city seriously and are unconcerned about it.
The bureaucrats must know the seriousness of the matter and understand that if the mitigation of the river Jhelum is further delayed it can inundate the areas from Panthachowk, to Rajbagh, Padshahi Bagh, Maujoornagar and Jawahar Nagar etc like in 2014, Zuhaib said.
Zuhaib impressed upon the administration to rise to the grim situation and remove bottlenecks in the way of execution of the flood project.
He urged upon the LG administration to shun the bureaucratic hegemony and take immediate measures for the upgradation and augmentation of the drain infrastructure across Srinagar otherwise an intermittent rainfall can destroy the so called smart city.
