NEW DELHI: It was August 16, 2010. Poonam Singh (29) clearly remembers when her only teenaged brother drowned with his friend in the drain in Taimoor Nagar, New Friends Colony. “My brother, with his friend, jumped into the drain to save a young boy who was drowning. The boy was saved but they themselves drowned,” Poonam recalled. A day after the incident, Poonam moved from Ludhiana to the area with her husband to support her parents and two sisters.
It was the first such mishap to occur in the two JJ colonies that have come up parallel to the drain. In the following years, many others have drowned, and the residents of the colonies now constantly fear for their children’s safety.“I don’t allow my son to cross the cement bridge built over the drain alone. In the seven-minute walk to his school, I always cross over holding his hand. What if he falls while playing or just peeking over it,” she said, looking at her six-year-old son sitting playing on a phone.
The drain, as far as Poonam can recall, has always remained covered with a thick layer of garbage, which is thrown into it every day by residents living near it. The garbage dumped near the first JJ colony forms a thick layer near the adjacent JJ colony, with moving water pushing it from behind. The layer of garbage is so thick that residents walk over it.
“We don’t walk over it. It’s a bog of garbage. My children use drainage pipe to cross over. The authorities come to clean the area once or twice a year when a complaint is made. Otherwise, nothing is done,” said Kusum Devi, a concerned mother of two.
The residents say they can cope with the foul smell, but they want two walls built on each side of the cement bridge to prevent people from falling off it.“Those living in big houses (across the drain) see it as a dump, and despite walls being erected by the South civic body to stop dumping, the garbage continues to pile up. Household garbage is flung into the drain in plastic bags. The area doesn’t have a single bin to dump waste,” said Mintu Khan of Camp 1 JJ colony.