Thiruvananthapuram
Thiruvananthapuram: All it needed was just one night’s rain to ‘sink’ parts of the Capital city nose-deep under water killing one person and trapping many in their houses.
Water entered houses and shops causing loss and hardships to the people. Making matters worse, the trenches dug for laying smartphone cables got filled posing a grave threat to lives. Many of these trenches were over six feet deep and had iron pipes jutting out.
Last year, the government and the corporation had promised that they would find a permanent solution for water-logging, but the misery continues.
Rajasekharan Nair, a Sree Chitra Colony resident said the hospital access has been cut off. “If this is the situation after one rain, god saves us when the monsoon arrives”, he said.
However, experts point out that part of the blame should be shared by people who live in the area as they dump waste in the stormwater drains, choking them.
Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department has issued a red alert for two days in Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta, Idukki and Alappuzha districts for heavy to very heavy rainfall.
In May 2018, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and a team went on a 13-day European tour and made a stop over at Noordward in the Netherlands, the site of the ‘Room for the River’ project. The flagship project of the Dutch government is centred around protecting areas adjoining rivers from routine flooding and improving water management systems in delta regions.
On his return, the CM had promised that the ‘Room for the River’ would be implemented in the state on a war footing to tackle floods. But the very same year, the state witnessed the century’s worst floods, which claimed nearly 500 lives and wiped out thousands of homes.
No lesson seems to have been learnt even six years later.
*Shankar Raj is a former editor of The New Indian Express, Karnataka and Kerala, and writes regularly on current affairs.
