Jaleswar: River Subarnarekha is said to be the sorrow of north Balasore because of the floods that inflict massive damage to life and property every year.
In the monsoon, people in this region lose their sleep over the fear of floods. In the past, due to river bank erosion, some villages have disappeared into the river.
To protect the region from floods, the government had planned 15 projects at a cost of Rs 100 crore. But these ambitious projects have been shelved due to red tape.
The river originates near Piska in Jharkhand and traverses a long distance through Ranchi, Seraikela Kharsawan, and East Singhbhumi districts. Thereafter, it flows for shorter distances through Paschim Medinapur district in West Bengal for 83 kilometres and Balasore district before merging with the Bay of Bengal near Talsari. The river’s course in Odisha is 60 km while its total length is 395 km.
In Balasore, there are no protective embankments along the river to prevent floods. A test relief embankment with a span of 80 km is along it.
There are no embankments along 30-km stretch. In the absence of protective embankments, floods wreak massive havoc in the region.
In view of this problem, a high powered technical committee of the state government had approved 15 major projects estimated at Rs 100 crore. Again, these projects were approved in 2018-19.
However, no fund has been provided for these projects. “Not a single penny was available for the water resources department,” said Priyabrata Singh, the executive engineer of the department.
The projects are stone-packing of embankment at Gobaraghata (Rs 6.72 crore), similar work at Jhadeswarpur (Rs 10.64 crore), Seikhsarai test relied embankment (Rs 9.81 crore), Laxmanath-Pirahat test relief embankment (Rs 8.61 crore), a spur at Rajpur (Rs 3.69 crore), four spurs at Balarampur lighthouse ( Rs 4.10 crore), a stone embankment at Ekatali (Rs 1.39 crore), embankments at Narayanpur and Srikanthpur (Rs 7.62 crore) embankments at Mohammedpatna Nagar (Rs 9.99 crore), Palasahi (Rs 3.75 core), Jamalpur and Sanaroutapada (Rs 6.66 core), Bhusandheswar temple (Rs 3.96 crore), Chandrabali (Rs 16. 91 crore) and stone-packing of Ullada-Khalabadia test relief embankment (Rs 3.16 crore).
Locals alleged that there has been no work on all these projects. Work of three spurs has been abandoned while stone packing and work of eight spurs at Makidia has been moving at a snail’s pace.
It was alleged that work of some projects are botched up due to an unholy nexus prevailing between contractors and the department’s engineers.
PNN