Before the monsoon, the Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited (IPSCDL) had desilted two Portuguese-era stormwater drains, situated between the market and Old Education Department building and from the Church Square to Custom House. Decades of accumulated silt had reduced the carrying capacity of rainwater from Altinho and other areas to the Mandovi River. This regularly led to water-logging in Panaji. In a letter it was suggested that the IPSCDL should identify and locate the network of drains (TGE 3.4.2024). Finally, the work of mapping Panaji’s 112-km-long drainage network has commenced under an UN-funded flood mitigation pilot project. Under the Urban Act Project funds have been provided to five countries: India, Philippines, Thailand, China and Indonesia. In India, the project is being carried out on a pilot basis in Panaji, Coimbatore and Shimla. Mapping Panaji’s drains costs Rs one crore and is being borne by the German universities (Stuttgart and TU Dortmund). LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technique is being used for the mapping, which is nearing completion. Identification of the drainage network could have been done prior to start of Smart City works, last year. By now Panaji would have been smarter and incident-free.
