No Relief from Water-Logging

Patna: July 23, 2008

Officials in Patna on Tuesday deployed four more boats in the water-logged Rajendra Nagar area to ease some pain of the victims even as situation in Kankarbagh, Kadam Kuan, and Rajendra Nagar remained grim with no sign of recession in the water level and no indication of any cleaning-up efforts in the affected areas.

With roads turning into overflowing sewerage filled with trash and dead animals, fear of an epidemic outbreak is setting in among the residents of many localities where water level has been stagnant for last several days.

There have been some attempt to spray bleaching powder in some of the affected areas, the efforts, by and large, remain far from adequate and organized.

After the initial photo-op tours of the water-logged areas, the Bihar leaders and bureaucrats have also quit showing their faces apprehending citizen backlash though the Patna Municipal Corporation Commissioner Mihir Kumar Singh said efforts were being made to drain water as fast as possible and bleaching powder were being sprayed to keep the mosquito population to a minimum.