BMC’s solution: Can’t fix potholes in Mumbai? Just stop counting them

Mumbai city news: This will be the first monsoon that will test the quality of roads repaired after a road scam hit the BMC and which left two of its chief engineers suspended

While heavy rain over the past two days left Mumbaiites battling with traffic snarls and potholes, municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta said that the civic body is not counting potholes this year.

A pothole-ridden road at Andheri on Tuesday. (Satish Bate/HT Photo)

Mehta said, “We are not counting the number of potholes as it remains a futile exercise. Instead, we are looking at the roads and attending to citizens’ complaints.” The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), before the onset of monsoon, had taken up 1,032 priority-I and II roads depending upon the urgency of repair needed.

Till 2015, the BMC was using a third-party system, where citizens could complain about potholes and civic engineers had to attend to complaints within 48 hours or face a penalty. The BMC started a pothole-tracking website in 2011. After discontinuing the system, the BMC released its own data of potholes in the city till last year and the number of potholes they attended. However, before this monsoon, the BMC said it will not count the number of potholes, but concentrate on repairing bad patches of roads, rather than isolated spots.

While the BMC denied releasing the number of potholes complaints they received, officials claimed that they have already attended to 90% of complaints. At present, the BMC is receiving complaints on its mobile application ‘MCGM 24x7’, where citizens can capture the longitude and latitude of the pothole’s location and upload a photograph.

This will be the first monsoon that will test the quality of roads repaired after a road scam hit the BMC and which left two of its chief engineers suspended. The BMC has also released 24 WhatsApp numbers to solve citizens’ problems from each ward. “At many places BMC is using paver blocks to fix potholes instead of potholes mixture bought from Israel and Australia, which they claimed to use,” said Nikhil Desai, member, F-north federation.

Second lake to overflow

In a week, the Tansa lake becomes the second to overflow, taking the water in the catchment area to 10, 28, 421 million litres on Tuesday. The water in the catchment area is already 71% of the stock Mumbai requires for a year. Last year, the water stock had just reached 50%, while in 2015 it was just 18%. In 2016, Tansa started to overflow on August 2.

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Weekend gave Mumbai half its average rain for the season