Delhi rains: Flood control room at PWD HQ begins ops
Following heavy rain last week, PWD minister Atishi along with irrigation and flood control minister Saurabh Bhardwaj reviewed waterlogging preparations.
The control room at the Public Works Department (PWD) headquarters at ITO has started functioning as the integrated “Delhi emergency control room” and live feed has started for real-time monitoring of waterlogging situation round the clock, officials aware of the matter said.
Following heavy rain last week, water and PWD minister Atishi along with irrigation and flood control minister Saurabh Bhardwaj reviewed waterlogging preparations and asked all departments to set up an integrated control room with PWD as the nodal agency. Civic agencies, including PWD, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Delhi Development Authority (DDA), all had separate control rooms and helpline numbers so far, and the ministers asked all the agencies to operate from a single location.
The integrated control room started operating from Thursday. The PWD helpline numbers — 011-23490323 and 1800 11 0093 — will now cater to emergency calls from across the city now. Residents can also send complaints and photos to the WhatsApp chatbot number, 8130188222. A daily waterlogging bulletin is also being prepared and reviewed by the government, officials said.
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“The existing PWD control room is now acting as an integrated centre for all agencies. Officials from all other agencies are deployed round the clock. Once a query or complaint is received here, it is transferred to the departments concerned. Waterlogging hot spots are also being continuously monitored through live feed from cameras that have been set up,” a senior PWD official said on condition of anonymity.
Officials added that at least 40 waterlogging-prone locations across the city, mostly underpasses and subways, are being continuously monitored by using around 100 cameras, and live feed are generated from all these locations.
Officials added that daily deliverables have been allotted to officials who must submit their reports every evening to PWD special secretary Shashanka Ala.
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“For effective monitoring of waterlogging at the Delhi emergency control room, the overall nodal officer and PWD supervising officer of the control room, in coordination with all executive engineers concerned, shall ensure that live feed of CCTV cameras installed at all pumping stations and all underpasses and sub-ways (one installed pointing upwards and other facing downwards) are essentially made available to the control room 24X7,” stated an order issued by Ala on Thursday.
The daily deliverables set for PWD officials include GPS mapping of all maintenance vehicles, GPS mapping of all temporary pumps, health check-up of all permanent pumps, status check of all temporary pumps, monitoring of all QRT inspection vehicles, deploying and reporting of five special QRT teams at different zones for reporting of waterlogging, monitoring of command and control centre and issuing daily monsoon bulletin. Nodal officers have been appointed for all these tasks.
Delhi has 308 critical locations that are waterlogging hot spots this year and will be monitored by various agencies, according to the data collected and compiled by the Delhi Police based on observations from monsoon last year. Of these, about 210 locations are under PWD, according to officials. This is up from 207 hot spots last year, of which 131 were related to PWD. Officials said that the increase of 100 such hot spots, 79 in PWD areas itself, can be attributed to the unusually heavy downpour last year that led to flooding in Delhi.
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