River March a citizens group, which is campaigning for clean rivers has asked BMC to investigate the complaints made by few of its members, on Monday about a Vehicle Mounted Suction Unit of the Sewerage Operations department, which allegedly was photographed releasing the contents of its tanker directly into Dahisar river.
While the members were not clear what was being released into the river they suspected foul play. Residents did not wait at just clicking photos and went ahead to file a complaint on BMC helpline and informed the Dahisar MLA Manisha Chaurdhary about the wrong doings. The Vehicle Mounted Suction Unit is mostly use to clear septic tanks and choked sewerage lines.
Srinivas Rao, a Dahisar resident first reported about this vehicle, which was parked opposite St Louis High School near Dahisar bridge located at Dahisar (West). "It was around 11am when I saw that the workers had pulled a pipe whose one end was connected to the tank of this machine while another end was towards Dahisar river and the vehicle only left after about 15-20 minutes," he said questioning whether it was right on part of the BMC to release anything like this directly into the river.
However BMC R/North ward officials clarified that neither sludge nor any polluting waste was released into the river. "The vehicle had addressed a complaint regarding a chocked Storm Water Drain (SWD) nearby and it was just rain water collected inside the drain, which was sucked by the machine that was released in the river," said the official.
Gopal Jhaveri, Founder of River March said that BMC seems to be covering up its act. "Our first question is that why release any thing in the river like this as it sends a complete wrong message to people. Secondly this suction machine is used for removing sludge from septic tank and there is always possibility of some sludge remaining that might get mixed with the so called clean water," he said adding that BMC should check this and even if its water from SWD it should not be released in river.
Meanwhile Rao said that this was not the first time he had seen these vehicles releasing its content directly in the river, infact he had spotted similar activity six months back too and there was always a chance that this was a common practice.
MLA Chaurdhary too affirmed receiving complaints and said that she will speak to BMC officials.
