BOMBAY: Workers pressed on with a massive clean-up in India’s financial hub Bombay yesterday after torrential monsoon rain eased for the first time in a week, but high waters forced thousands to flee their homes and weather damage was put at around $888 million.
Police chief P.S. Pasricha of Maharashtra state, of which Bombay is the capital, said some 60,000 slum dwellers living alongside rain-swollen rivers, lakes and dams in Bombay’s northern outskirts were moved to higher ground as some flooding was reported.
Skies were overcast but rain had stopped falling in much of Bombay for the first time since July 26.
The reprieve gave work crews a chance to tackle clearing mounds of garbage and carcasses of animals drowned in the rains that killed 409 people in the city. A total of 993 people have died across the whole of the state including Bombay.
In the city’s inundated western district of Kalina, trucks ferried tonnes of garbage scooped from the streets as bulldozers cleared rotting grain and vegetables and garbage such as soiled clothes, broken furniture and ruined bedding.
The week-long monsoon deluge was the worst ever recorded in the city of 15 million.
The overpowering stench of garbage welcomed visitors to Kalina as soldiers and rescue workers continued round-the-clock efforts to restore a semblance of normality.
Red Cross officials said more than 100,000 volunteers were distributing relief and treating the injured in Kalina.
“The picture we get is not very encouraging,” Homi Modi, honorary secretary of Bombay’s Red Cross. “The scene is pretty bad.
There are some regions where we are thinking of airlifting supplies.” Bare-chested Deepak Vittal, a slum dweller whose home was flooded, was among more than 200 people who stood in a queue to collect a bag of clothes, biscuits and drinking water being distributed by Red Cross volunteers.
“I have been staying for the past week at a (half-built) building. There is not a single vessel remaining in the house.
Everything has been washed away,” he said.
At Kalina’s Sanjay Nagar suburb residents complained they were yet to get relief.
“For the past seven days there has been no electricity nor drinking water. Taps are churning out muddy and filthy water,” said a barefoot Sikander Zhaid.
Chairman of private power utility Reliance Energy, Anil Ambani, said yesterday some 21,000 households still lack electricity a week after the torrential rains began lashing the city.
“We are going to take help from other private power suppliers across Gujarat for repair and maintenance work. At least 100 new transformers will be installed across the western suburbs,” he told reporters.
Health teams were fanning out across the state with anti-malarial tablets and other drugs to fight water-borne diseases.
Under what Bombay officials have dubbed “Operation Recovery”, an army of 130,000 municipal workers is repairing potholed roads, unclogging drains and trying to restore electricity and drinking water where supplies are still cut.
Suburban train services were returning to normal yesterday while office attendance was much higher than in the past week.
International carrier Air India said flights would take off on schedule from today after a backlog of passengers had been cleared.
Analysts said the downpours caused such damage to the heavily industrialised state that a government forecast of seven percent national economic growth for the year ending March 2006 may need to be cut to six per cent.
The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimated damage at around 40 billion rupees ($888 million).
Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said flood alerts were issued in four regions after reservoir levels touched “danger levels”, prompting the evacuations.
Torrential rains have also hit the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh, killing nine people, the Press Trust of India reported.
Damage was also reported in other states       . – AFP 
Last update on: 3-8-2005