Nagpur: The NMC’s ‘Clean River Mission’ has gained momentum. Under the annual exercise of cleaning nullah and rivers before monsoon, the Nagpur Municipal Corporationwithin a week completed work at 84 sites. In all, the target is to remove the bushes and other unwanted plants from banks of the nullahs and rivers and remove the silt so as to deepen the bed at 227 nullahs.
The NMC undertook nullah-cleaning work from April 12 onwards. To ensure that no shortcoming is left in the exercise that also aims to avoid flooding of low lying localities in adjoining areas, the cleaning programme is divided into two phases.
In the first phase, focus is kept on six divisions so that the entire machinery can work in totality. The second phase would start form May 1 and end on May 8 and focus on remaining sub-divisions. During the annual exercise nearly 0.8-1.5 lakh metric tonnes of sludge is removed. The length of Yellow River is 17 km while that of Nag River is 17.75 km and the length of Pohra River is 12 km.
Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) has also provided machinery to help with cleaning exercise. The city is also dotted with several nullahs, about 227 in all and they are located at Gaddigodam, Balabhaupeth, Boriyapura, Dobinagar, Lakdipool, Takiya, Narendra Nagar, Sitabuldi and of 154 nullahs are cleaned using manpower while at 73 machines are deployed. So far as per NMC, 84 sites have been cleaned, 71 by manpower and 13 by machines. At present cleaning of 12 nullahs is being done by manpower and 7 by machines. The civic body has deployed 7 JCBs, and Poclains for cleaning the drains, said NMC sources.