Contractor’s family blames SMC, IPH Dept for outbreak

Tribune News Service

Shimla, February 5

The family of Akshay Doegar, contractor of the sewage treatment plant, currently under judicial custody along with four others, today came out in his support.

They blamed the Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC) for the jaundice outbreak and the Irrigation and Public Health department for not paying heed to the contractor’s request to repair the machines of the plant.

Addressing a press conference today, father of the contractor OC Doegar, his sister-in-law Puja Doegar and others charged that the Shimla Mayor and Deputy Mayor were responsible the spread of jaundice in the city as they distributed the water.

The contractor, they said, wrote letters in 2013, 2014 and 2015 to the IPH Department to repair the machineries of the plant, set up a generator, construct link road as directed by the High Court on July 8, 2009, but nothing was done. The IPH consultant inspected the plant and had suggested the same measures, they pointed out.

They claimed that the MC had not improved sewage connectivity on the peripheries of Mehli to Bhata Kufar and other areas.