Hyderabad: The jammed gate of Secunderabad’s Fox Sagar Lake which the officials and engineers were unable to unlock despite all the tries, was successfully opened by a local mechanic, Mohammad Khadeer.
The gate was last opened almost two decades ago, after which it had remained jammed with debris, rocks and plastic.A big rock was stuck exactly where the wheels of the sluice gate were supposed to rotate. After the technical staff failed to remove the rock, Khadeer stepped in on the request of the local councillor.
Khadeer said that He was aware that works to open the Fox Sagar sluice gate had begun by the officials, as most of the chawls, bastis and residential areas around the lake have been inundated by water. And When the local councillor approached him for help on Tuesday as the gate was openingdespite all tries from almost eight days, he agreed and went with a couple of boys. He tried to understand which part of the gate could or could not be worked around, since it was a very old structure, reports Indian Express.
“We soon realised that it was not an engineering issue, rather, debris from the lake had got stuck at multiple levels of the four sluice gates. It took us over four to five hours to cut through layers of tarpaulin, fabric, debris, plastic, loose rocks and boulders,” Khadeer added.
The opening of the sluice gates sparked an outburst of cheers, and the technical team on the spot showered Khadeer with compliments, calling him the ‘man of the hour.’ Once the gates are opened, water from the lake flows into the nala underneath the culvert junction, up to Hussainsagar.