Vijayawada station faces threat from drainage under the tracks

VIJAYAWADA: Serious questions have cropped up over the safety of the railway tracks in one of the busiest railway junctions in the country -
Vijayawada - after the incessant downpour ravaged the city.

The railway tracks have come under safety scanner due to the existence of an old drainage line passing underneath the tracks in the station. In fact, clogging of drainage at the railway station has been identified as one of main reasons for the waterlogging in the I Town area since Sunday night.

The underground drainage line, constructed by the British way back in 1930s, passes through all the platforms at about 4 metres depth. The decades-old drainage line is posing a threat not only to the old city but also to the railway lines as tonnes of garbage gets collected underneath the tracks.

Though the garbage between 7-3 platforms was cleared, the drainage water is not flowing due to heavy collection of debris between 3-1 platforms. The efforts of the municipal authorities to remove the silt and debris piled up in the drainage has not yielded results as they could not deploy machines keeping in view of the safety of the tracks.

They used motor pumps to push the rubble through the channel but it was to no avail. Sources said the drainage was last cleaned in 1989 at a cost of Rs 30 lakh. The 149-metre long and 5.6-metre wide drain covering almost 11 municipal divisions in the old city area merges with the Eluru channel but nearly 70-metre long drain runs beneath the tracks.

"It is becoming increasingly difficult to go deep into the drainage for fear of coming in contact with poisonous gases. We cannot remove the silt all by ourselves and the railway authorities should also chip in," an engineer supervising the works said.

The municipal authorities did not deploy workers to clean the drainage keeping in view of the death of two sanitary workers clearing the drainage on Bandar road recently.