Mass leave of Mumbai civic engineers slows down repairs on 250 bridges

42 officials won’t attend work for 2 weeks, protesting arrest of retired chief engineer in CSMT bridge collapse case

Ahead of monsoon, repairs on more than 250 bridges across Mumbai have taken a major hit, as 42 engineers from the civic body’s bridges department announced they were taking two weeks of paid leave from Thursday.

A BMC engineers’ union meeting in Parel on Thursday. (Kunal Patil/HT Photo)

The engineers are protesting the arrest of a retired chief engineer of the bridges department, SO Kori, in connection with the collapse of a portion of Himalaya Bridge outside Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in March, which killed seven people.

Around 170 bridges need minor repairs, 47 bridges need major repairs, while 40 need demolition and reconstruction work. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) intended to complete most of these repair works before monsoon, to avoid any mishaps during the rains.

A senior civic official said, “There is a lot of work pending, with needs to be completed with urgency for the sake of the city. These officials oversee this work.”

The officials have also been tasked with supervising the re-audit of 77 bridges in the island city, as decided by the BMC following the collapse. Some of these 77 bridges were earlier audited by the DD Desai firm, which was in charge of auditing the Himalaya Bridge.

The BMC recently completed re-auditing bridges in the eastern and western suburbs and finalised Strutwel structural auditing firm to audit 77 bridges in the island city. The proposal to hire Strutwel on a contract basis is likely to be tabled before the standing committee in the upcoming weeks. The officers who have gone on leave are also in charge of finalising work on 10 new tenders for bridge repairs and floating 15 other new tenders.

A senior civic official said, “The engineers are protesting the arrest on the grounds that there may be negligence from staff, but not criminal negligence. This means there was no intent to harm the public. In such a case, punishment should be at par with the offence of negligence, if any is found, and not criminal negligence. However, from the BMC’s perspective, we need to wait for the detailed report from the vigilance department on the incident.”

However, activists believe BMC should strong-arm its protesting engineers. Activist Godfrey Pimenta said, “BMC can invoke provisions of the essential service maintenance act and issue the engineers a memo for holding the corporation to ransom. The civic body needs to send the right kind of message and the administration has to take the bull by the horn for the safety of the city.”

Meanwhile, engineers’ union leader Sainath Rajadhyaksh, said all civic engineers will stage a protest next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. According to Rajadhyaksh, other department engineers will work on Monday and Tuesday, but not beyond office hours.