Ulhasnagar civic body gets third manhole cleaning robot

Thane: The Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation (UMC) on Friday, December 23 received the third manhole cleaning robot for cleaning the clogged sewers in the city. The robot has been given to the Ulhasnagar civic body by the Tata Trust through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds.

The robot was inaugurated by the UMC commissioner Aziz Sheikh and others present on the occasion were UMC additional commissioner of Jamir Lengrekar, Karuna Juikar, deputy commissioner Ashok Naikwade, engineer Dilip Wankhede, BS Patil and Tata Trust’s Ondrila Roy Adijan.

The civic body has decided to use robots to clean the clogged sewers in the city instead of using the UMC labours. Earlier, the Municipal Corporation purchased two robots from CSR funds.

UMC commissioner, Aziz Sheikh said, “As the capacity of the underground sewers in Ulhasnagar is exhausted, the sewers are blocked at many places and sewage is seen flowing on the streets. In the third phase of the Amrit Yojana of the Central and State Governments, the work of underground sewerage will be started within the city with a fund of more than 400 crores. Until then the civic body has decided to use robots to clean the sewers. Earlier the UMC has already purchased two robots from the CSR fund of a known company and the underground sewers are being cleaned by the robots. After the use of robots the  citizens have got some relief from the blocked sewers. We did a follow-up with the Tata Trust regarding the CSR fund, the Tata Trust gave the third robot to the civic body from the CSR fund on Friday.”

Sheikh added, “The city’s sewers were earlier cleaned by labour. There have been incidents of suffocation of workers while cleaning sewers in other civic bodies. In order to avoid such a situation, the UMC has decided to use robots to clean the manholes of depths of up to 10 meters.”

Talking about the robots Sheikh added, “The two robots have already been commissioned by the UMC Health Department from the CSR fund. The robot received from the Tata Trust’s CSR fund is called ‘Bandicoot’ and the machine is engineered for cleaning any type of sewer. The robot consists of two major units including a stand unit and a robotic drone unit. The drone unit which is affixed with cameras will drive into the manholes for cleaning and unblocking clogged drains.”