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With heavy rain battering the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has recorded 102 pothole-related complaints in the -‘My BMC pothole fixit’ digital portal over the past three days.
The application was launched by the civic body in 2019 to address pothole-related complaints and ensure they are resolved quickly.
Meanwhile, civic officials said the pothole-fixing drive is ongoing round the clock. Currently, 227 sub-engineers have been deployed to supervise the pothole-filling work that is being done by the contractors.
As per the data procured from the app, Mumbaikars had registered 102 complaints until Tuesday. The civic body attended to 27 complaints and completed work on 24 of them. Moreover, the BMC plans to commence repair works on 51 potholes. Data also showed that out of the total complaints received, around eight of them were non-existent.
“To ensure smooth flow of traffic, we are undertaking pothole-filling works round the clock. The contractors are using asphalt mastic and cold mix, along with ready-mix concrete, to fill the potholes. Almost all of the potholes are cropping up in asphalt roads and this problem can be solved only by concretising them,” said an official from the BMC’s road department.
“Since no concretisation work is possible during the rains, we have instructed contractors to fix and maintain the bad roads so that they are motorable throughout the monsoon season,” said a civic official.
Meanwhile, Asif Zakaria, a former corporator from Bandra (West), said while the ward level officers and BMC’s road department have been very proactive, the inactivity of the contractors is the root of the problem.
“As far as attending to patch works is concerned, the contractors who have bagged big tenders have been found wanting and the road department struggles to get them to work”, added Zakaria.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Milind Mhaske, CEO of Praja Foundation, said, “Every year, potholes crop up across the city during monsoon with the BMC attributing it to heavy rains… The problem of potholes should ideally have been resolved but quality of work gets hampered because of high corruption in the system. It is not an engineering capacity issue but more of a leadership issue, who is not ensuring that the rules are followed.”
Following rainfall on Saturday, several small potholes have emerged in Lokhandwala, said Dhaval Shah, director of Lokhandwala Oshiwara Citizen’s Association (LOCA) . “Yet again, several potholes have surfaced everywhere across the city. I believe that the corporation must not use cold mix because when they use them year after year to fill the potholes, they do not last for more than a week and the potholes keep coming back. The BMC must resort to hot mix to fix this issue.”, Shah told Express on Tuesday.
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