PUNE: After Thursday’s TOI report on how the sunken RCC covers on a water channel crossing the Ramwadi underpass had flooded the carriageway and were causing accidents almost daily, Pune Municipal Corporation ( PMC ) changed the covers and removed the debris. However, problems have resurfaced, local people said.An engineer for the PMC projects department, which looks after critical infrastructure like underpasses, said the covers have been replaced with sturdier material. “The covers were replaced over the weekend. We have now used structured steel covers for the water channel, adjusted to the level of the road,” he added.According to the PMC engineers, the previous covers had sunk because vehicles approached the underpass from Kalyaninagar at quite a pace, which is why the covers would cave in and the water would cause slippage accidents. The flooding would render only one narrow flank usable.However, locals say that water has started reaching the surface again, mainly due to the covers__ newly installed__ being already bent downwards, and below the level of the carriageway, albeit less than the RCC covers.“What was the benefit of changing the covers? I went there today, and I still found water on the surface from the channel. The water is less than what it was. The PMC’s argument that the force of vehicles is damaging the covers is unfounded. It’s not possible to drive that fast on that slope. But this is the case of a project on which so much money has been spent and has been constructed for so long. The PMC are just opting for quick fixes and no concrete solutions are coming up,” Qaneez Sukhrani, the convenor of the Vimannagar Citizens’ Forum, said.People who use the underpass daily also expressed displeasure about how the supposed changes are turning out to be defective.“The civic body can find a way so that these covers are not changed that often,” Rajendra Chauhan , who works at an IT firm in Vimannagar, said. PMC engineers were unaware that the new covers have been damaged. “We have to look into the matter,” a project department engineer said.

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