In developing countries, like India, the population within sewered areas in prime metros has always been unaware of the importance of underground drainage maintenance. These conduits, that can carry away the untreated waste water to the point of treatment and disposal, undoubtedly have done more to improve the quality of life in a community than any other social or technological advance. It is only when a sever flooding occurs that people realize drainage maintenance is an important environmental issue which if not attended to, causes widespread diseases, contamination of drinking water and in certain cases, death! Due to the present awareness levels the maintenance authorities at the BMC have now discarded the age-old inhuman method of using labour for cleaning drains and adopted the more effective ‘preventive’ approach using mechanized methods of drain (nallah) cleaning. These methods are in line with practices adopted worldwide. BMC has now a systematic sewer maintenance programme which uses state of the art Amphibious Dredgers from M/s. Sandhurst Manufacturing Co. (SMC) of U.K. These amphibious dredgers, as their name suggests can walk or swim thereby accessing all locations of the nallahs. These “6808” amphibian machines have successfully carried out thousands of metric tones of vigorous desilting and in the process helped the BMC to come closer to their goal of 'flood free monsoons' by keeping the nallahs free of slit.

These 6808 amphibian machines are a part of procurement programme of BMC have been supplied in the past by M/s. IPWT Mumbai who are the pioneers in such environmental technology, worldwide. It is understood that BMC intends to continue this sewer maintenance programme which includes creating higher awareness levels for the citizen groups in Mumbai.