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Pothole plaints rise as Mumbai sees heavy rain spells
As Mumbai received some heavy spells of rainfall this year in June and July, the complaints related to potholes have increased by around 38% as compared to last year
As Mumbai received some heavy spells of rainfall this year in June and July, the complaints related to potholes have increased by around 38% as compared to last year. In June and July 2020, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) received around 315 complaints related to potholes that went up to 437 this year till July 25.
According to data reported on MyBMC Pothole Fixit mobile app, the civic body had attended to 264 complaints 8 in 2020, while this year, of the 437 complaints, only 262 have been attended to so far.
Apart from the app, citizens can also register their complaints via email and on social media.
Shantanu Kulkarni, director of Probity Soft, the firm which operates BMC’s app for reporting potholes, said, “The complaints reported this year were a little more than last year, and it could be further more. However, due to lockdown and people working from home, not many complaints have gone unreported.”
On July 13, HT had reported that there was a 76% drop in the number of potholes during 2020-2021 as compared to 2019-2020. Since June 1 to July 13, a total of 239 potholes had been reported in the city, according to data. However, the number of complaints increased drastically in the past two weeks owing to heavy rainfall.
Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal held a meeting with BMC officials on Friday over the issue of potholes and directed the road department to attend to the complaints of potholes proactively and also prepare report of the complaints.
“During the peak of the second wave in April and May, many officials were on Covid-19 duty and due to this the entire process of repair and maintenance of road works went for a toss,” a BMC official said.
BMC maintains around 2,055km of roads in the city, and every road is repaired or resurfaced using asphalt or concrete cement from the existing paver blocks. According to estimates presented in the budget 2021-22, BMC proposed to improve the road network of 157km during financial year 2021-22, which is less than the target of 289km set in 2020-21.
Dahisar resident Animesh Vora said, “In our area, BMC repaired one road as it was in bad shape, but started work on the very next road to it to fix the drainage line. The drainage line is fixed, but now there are big potholes on the road, which was a smooth one earlier. Hence, it is not just the rain, but civic officials also end up creating potholes in the city.”
