In a major push to ensure prompt action and mitigate public inconvenience during the monsoon season, Punjab Local Government Minister Harjot Singh Bains said the Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana, has set up the ‘Monsoon war room’, a tech-enabled control centre, to monitor the city 24×7 through 1,700 CCTV cameras.
While inspecting the facility set up at the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) at MC’s Zone D office in Sarabha Nagar on Thursday, Bains said the war room live-streams HD footage from flood-prone intersections, low-lying colonies and vulnerable drains. He said the system would identify inundation within seconds and helps map floods, enabling teams to be deployed to exact locations, cutting response time from hours to minutes.
After reviewing the real-time analytics, the minister said a dedicated monsoon helpline number would also be launched soon. Citizens can call the helpline to report waterlogging, blocked drains or overflowing nullahs and
the complaint would be logged at the war room instantly.
Each complaint would be geo-tagged on the city map, assigned to the nearest field team and tracked till resolved. The goal was to fix issues at the earliest and let people see the action in real time, he added.
During a subsequent review meeting with MC officials, Bains laid out an action plan to prevent monsoon-related civic failures. He directed round-the-clock monitoring, desilting of the Buddha Dariya and main sewer lines, covering of manholes to prevent accidents, cleaning of road gullies and urgent repair works on damaged roads.
“Under Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann’s leadership, we are leaving no stone unturned. ‘Mission Clean Punjab’ is an operational order, not a slogan,” Bains said. He warned that officials found negligent in desilting or emergency response would face strict action. It will not be tolerated.
The meeting was attended by Mayor Inderjit Kaur, MC Commissioner Ojasvi Alankar, Senior Deputy Mayor Rakesh Prashar, Deputy Mayor Prince Johar, Joint Commissioner Tapan Bhanot and Assistant Commissioner Jasdev Sekhon.
The MC Commissioner apprised the minister on the command centre’s operational readiness and said civic body teams were on high alert.
