BANGALORE: The city has 60,000 manholes and to overcome the trouble of employing manual labour to clean up all these manholes and reduce wastage of water, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board has now invested Rs 90 lakh.
The board has purchased six desilting machines with each machine costing `7 lakh. Each monsoon, the water board is able to clear merely 15,000 of the 60,000 manholes in the city. The problem has left many areas in a mess. The last monsoon affected the city badly with manholes overflowing in different area, stagnation resulting in increased health issues due to manhole blockages and sewerage seeping from uncovered or damaged manholes. To solve this problem, new scientifically designed machines were bought.
“These scientifically designed machines mounted on 4-wheeler mini trucks can be used for quick cleaning of silt, liquid waste from manholes and wet wells. These machines have a hydraulically operated grab bucket that can pick up silt from a 32 feet deep manhole and then empty the silt into a hopper mounted on the mini truck,” said BWSSB Minister Suresh Kumar.
The water board will further be spending `5 lakh on each machine as the cost of operation and maintenance. Earlier, the board had to conduct desilting work manually. ww