66% of Mumbai potholes yet to be repaired
If pothole-riddled rides on the city’s major roads are bad, brace yourself as minor roads are in an even worse condition.
If pothole-riddled rides on the city’s major roads are bad, brace yourself as minor roads are in an even worse condition.
In what reflects a state of utter neglect towards maintenance of minor roads, as many as 704 of the 1,004 potholes reported on these roads are yet to be repaired, according to data presented on the civic body’s pothole-tracking website.
This accounts for 66% of your pothole complaints about internal roads that are yet to be addressed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
Civic officials said that there is a larger difficulty in plotting potholes on minor roads that amounts to the delay in repair work.
“There are many internal roads that cannot be located on Google Maps.
So assigning responsibility for their repair takes longer,” said Aseem Gupta, additional municipal commissioner in charge of roads.
Usually, after a pothole is reported on the website, software operators process its location and forward this to the concerned civic road engineer (RE) who examines the pothole and assigns it to the contractor for repair.
“But with the difficulty in locating potholes, the pothole complaints on minor roads are first forwarded to the executive engineer at the ward level, who then decides on the pothole’s location and accordingly assigns it to an RE to ensure repairs,” said Gupta.
Citizens said the administration has overlooked these groundlevel technical issues that hamper the functioning of the pothole tracker.
“Minor roads are in a horrible state. There are at least two dozen huge potholes near Mahila Ashram which witnesses heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic,” said Nikhil Desai, member of FNorth Citizens’ Forum.
Wards D (Khetwadi, Tardeo, Walkeshwar and Mahalaxmi) and F-North (Matunga and Sion) have as many as 124 and 79 potholes reported on minor roads.