Roads surrounding or leading to some of the private hospitals in Mukundapur, off EM Bypass, went under water yet again on Tuesday morning, inconveniencing hundreds of patients and their families.
The road outside the emergency department of AMRI Hospitals Mukundapur was waterlogged.
“The roads for entry and exit were under water. Water also entered the basement parking lot, where doctors and other employees of the hospital, patients’ escorts and other visitors park their cars,” said an official of the hospital.
The road leading to the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) from EM Bypass was flooded, too.
There was more than ankle-deep water on a stretch of the road, especially the section near the gates of the Avidipta housing complex.
A few other hospitals are located along the road.
“A number of patients and their family members hire rickshaws to reach the hospital from the Bypass. The rickshaws travel through the road that was waterlogged today. Rickshaws today either refused to ply because of water or charged exorbitant rates,” said an official of the hospital.
Patients and others often have to wade through water on their way to the hospital during the monsoon.
The Telegraph had reported a number of times in July about the problem of waterlogging around the Mukundapur hospitals.
Though the rain on Tuesday was spread out over a longer period than on most days in July, the roads were still flooded.
Unlike in July, there was hardly any intense spell of rain for a short period, such as an hour.
At AMRI, officials said the footfall at the outpatient department and Covid vaccination clinics were lower than usual.
“Even taxis and app cabs refused to drop people at the hospital’s entry gate because of the waterlogging. Drivers feared water would enter the engine and the car would get stuck,” said an official of AMRI.
The Dhapa lock drainage pumping station of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, close to Mukundapur, recorded 90mm of rain between 6am and 5pm.
An engineer in the KMC’s drainage department blamed the waterlogging around the hospitals on the silt in the Guniagachi canal that had accumulated over the years.
The canal drains out the water from Mukundapur and Nayabad.
“This is the canal that can be seen under the Bypass where one takes a left turn to proceed towards the gate of Avidipta. We have informed the irrigation department that the canal badly needs dredging. It does not have the required capacity to drain out water, which is the primary reason for waterlogging,” said the engineer.
