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Ahmedabad’s Drain Cleaning: 275 Crores Spent in 10 Years, 2,000 Complaints Per Day
Despite the expenditure, complaints about overflowing drains continue to rise.
Ahmedabad, March 12, 2025
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has spent Rs 274.87 crore over the past 10 years to remove silt from drains in 48 wards. In 2024, from January to December, Rs 43 crore was spent on drain cleaning. However, complaints about overflowing drains continue to increase. Despite spending Rs 43 crore in one year, 3.51 lakh complaints were received. While claims are made that modern machines are used for cleaning, the reality seems different.
Contracts are awarded to clean drains in different wards of the city by the Drainage Project Department and at the zone level. Contractors use high-flow jetting, mini jetting, super sucker machines, and combined jetting machines for desilting operations. The municipal corporation has 60 cleaning machines, and four private-owned machines are also used. Still, the complaints about overflowing drains are increasing.
To avoid the need for workers to clean drains, the city has rented two recycling machines for seven years at a cost of Rs 33.45 crore. In total, 66 desilting machines are used to clean the city’s drains. Advanced jetting machines with recycling facilities have been rented for cleaning the city’s drainage lines, with a PPP model under which these two recycling machines were rented for Rs 33.45 crore over seven years.
On average, 1,811 complaints related to drains are made to the municipal corporation every day. In the last three months, 96,889 complaints have been received about drainage issues and polluted water. Among these complaints, 24,360 are related to polluted water due to leakage in the water and drain lines.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation spends crores of rupees every year under the Drainage Project to carry out various operations, including cleaning drains and manholes. Yet, instead of reducing complaints about drains, they continue to rise. Through a comprehensive redressal system, the municipal corporation collects complaints from citizens about basic services. Between May and July of this year, a total of 166,679 complaints were received from seven zones. The most common complaints were about overflowing drains, backflow of drain water, and polluted water due to leaks in the water and drain lines.
The middle zone received the highest number of complaints, with 25,525 about drainage and engineering issues, and 831 complaints about stormwater drainage. In the northern zone, there were 21,007 complaints about drainage and engineering issues, and 1,192 complaints about stormwater drainage.
Those Who Don’t Resolve Complaints Will Conduct Random Checks
There are master stations in 48 wards. The responsibility for resolving complaints related to water, drains, and roads lies with the assistant engineers, deputy city engineers, and other staff from the engineering department at the ward level. A presentation in the standing committee indicated that most complaints regarding basic services remain unresolved. The committee decided that the staff at the ward level will conduct random checks of unresolved complaints related to basic services.
