Mumbai civic commissioner pulls up chief engineer, ward officers for pothole plaints

Upset at the lack of response over pothole complaints, municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi came down heavily on chief engineer of roads and ward officers and

Upset at the lack of response over pothole complaints, municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi came down heavily on chief engineer of roads and ward officers and asked them to expedite work on repairing potholes.

HT Image

Pardeshi pointed out that there has been barely any response to the complaints on potholes and bad patches which the civic body received on its Twitter handle. Senior officials told HT that Pardeshi was especially fumed with the chief engineer of roads for his lethargic attitude on pothole-repair work.

A senior civic official said, “It was observed that pothole complaints are not being attended to at the speed they were supposed to. Because of this, the number of unattended pothole complaints have gone up.”

HT had recently reported that the BMC has received 2, 648 complaints from June 10 to August 7, of which 1, 578 potholes were reported in the first 30 days. Contrary to Pardeshi’s observation, the BMC officials had claimed to have attended 2,234 pothole complaints, which is 84.37% of the total complaints received.

Pardeshi, on an internal communication platform, pointed out that only 325 complaints related to potholes on Twitter have been unattended. Of these, the K East (Andheri, Vile Parle), S (Vikhroli and Bhandup), K west (Andheri and Vile Parle west) and P North (Malad) wards have significantly higher number of unattended pothole complaints. Pardeshi said that either the figure has not been updated or they have not been addressed.

Civic officials said that the complaints on Twitter are being analysed to earmark bad patches of roads at regular intervals.

Despite repeated attempts, the chief engineer of roads was unavailable for comment.