Even after holding several meetings with officials of the district town planning department no action has been initiated to ameliorate the situation.
Residents of Fresco Apartments in Sector 50, Gurgaon, are a troubled lot. Why? They have been facing the challenge of flooded basements for the last three years, and authorities have only twiddled their thumbs.
Even after holding several meetings with officials of the district town planning department no action has been initiated to ameliorate the situation, allege RWA members. They are being forced to use water pumps and generator sets to drain out water from the basement in the event of rains.
“What is the point of holding meeting with authorities if they can’t force the developer to act?” lashed out Nilesh Tandon, RWA president.
And why’s this happening?
The builder, explain residents, did no waterproofing of the green area in the society, due to which rainwater seeps into the basement through expansion joints. Rainwater harvesting pits in the society lie unused and the sump pumps installed to clear rain run-off from the premises are non-functional too.
“In the absence of a stormwater pipeline, there’s no other provision to drain out rainwater from the premises. Despite repeated requests to the department of town and country planning (DTCP) and the senior town planner (STP) over the last three years, nothing has been done. Our neighbours at Nirvana Country have a stormwater line connected to the HUDA master pipeline, and we have been requesting the authorities to enable discharge of rainwater through their pipeline,” said a Fresco resident, who did not want to be named.
“Repeated flooding of our basement not only risks structural damage to the building, but also poses a health risk as vector-borne diseases could spread through accumulated water. This rainwater could have been put to better and more productive use had it been stored in the water harvesting pits. We have been writing to the authorities over the last three years on the flooding issue, but nothing happened,” DK Jain, a resident, said.
RWA members also alleged that the trays under expansion joints are broken or missing and no action has been taken to repair and replace them.
City Spidey spoke to district town planner RS Bhath. He confirmed, “I have called the representative of the developer to my office next week. We will resolve this issue and make sure that stormwater pipelines are laid out at the earliest.”
