Massive traffic jams across the city, especially in areas that are badly flooded including Dadar, Parel, Sion, Andheri, Jogeshwari and Santa Cruz. Residents complained that brand new water pumping stations on which the civic body spent 200 crores failed to work after being damaged by rocks. A five-year-old child and 60-year-old man died after being electrocuted in Wadala, which was one of the worst hit areas. Mumbai has once again stuck in water.
BMC is silent over the news of monsoon. Really, this is strange. Every year, there is at least one picture of a BMC worker who is working towards clearing the choked drainage, the silent messages depicted in pictures but, what is the point in it? Government is making budgets for drainage and those people are doing their jobs, why to even bother in praising for the work? They signed up for this, by themselves! Much of the government funds are wasted by the ever procrastinating people who are not answerable to anybody. Thankfully, the privatisation has spurred those workers to work hard and be answerable. For example, the railways, people working for the railways are now ‘lesser’ corrupt, they are, I would not defy it but, the point of escalations has been brought up a higher scale.
Mumbai is hit by rains during June and that if escalators are not protected against weather then they will rust and become non-functional even before the inauguration! Even thinking of non-functional machine makes me smile that when delegators come for inauguration and escalator don’t work at that time. Of course, there are attempts being made to ‘advance’ the facilities to passengers by installing escalators worth nearly Rs. 80 lakhs per set which can speed up enough to cope with the rising demand of commuters. Ideally, the escalators are powerful enough and require more electricity than an elevator, depending on the number of people joining it. So, what next? Definitely, price of railway tickets will go up. Again we commuters have to bear the price of new facility given to us. It is funny to read certain posts on Facebook where people comment and like heavily. We live in a city where a pizza is delivered before the police could arrive. Such is the scenario for commuters, railways does require their employees to be disciplined and firm in their actions but, someone should also keep up with the ownership to help railways spend our money, wisely.
More money spending schemes are coming up! Mumbai is also billed to have protected the monumental buildings. There are over 110 monuments in the city and each is derived in their own style, each of them needs protection in their own style and each style needs a special approach. Although, right now only the data is being compiled to know which monument will need what kind of facility for protection. We have witness that Taj Mahal has been going ‘yellowish’ and many credited the ‘acid rains’ which are mainly caused due to factories using thermal energy where the combustion rate of coal used is not even near 90 per cent. Lesser the combustion rate, lesser the pollution, it’s simple math. Government should also impose restrictions on the type of additives which are being used in factories using coal for combustion.
Everyone who puts in the efforts deserve to be paid, some is with hospital staff who should go ahead and slap bills to the police department. People should not feel ransacked for the ‘favours’ done by Police or work done by them because just like BMC, even they are just doing their work, however, good work deserves good comments. Once again, Mumbai is bracing to tackle heavy rains which have resulted in cancellation of local train services leaving thousands of commuters stranded. In the early hours, thousands of commuters leaving for offices were caught unaware on reaching the suburban railway stations as trains were being cancelled due to water-logging of tracks following heavy downpour since Thursday night. As services on all three railway lines – Central, Western and Harbour – were cancelled, hurried commuters rushed to catch buses, taxis or any other mode of transport available to reach their destinations, which resulted in massive traffic jams at many places, exacerbated by inundation in low-lying areas.
The civic body issued a flood alert and warned people against travelling, especially during the high tide. Officials warned that the situation could be worse during the high tide between 2 and 5 pm, when the rising sea water could exacerbate flooding. Large parts of Mumbai, including the central, western and eastern suburbs, are flooded, and traffic has come to a standstill. Train services have been badly hit; the harbour line has been completely suspended.
This Government too failed to tackle the issue as usual…
Stay safe Mumbaikar, only you can take care of yourself.
