‘Contractors, civic neglect to be blamed for bad roads’

Shoddy repair work by road contractors and the lack of supervision by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are to be blamed for the sorry state of roads and the resultant rise in accidents, believe civic officials.

Shoddy repair work by road contractors and the lack of supervision by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are to be blamed for the sorry state of roads and the resultant rise in accidents, believe civic officials.

HT Image

On Wednesday, two men lost their lives after their bike got stuck in a utility duct cover and skidded, only to hit a parked dumper in Chandivli.

“The area adjoining a manhole is never flattened sufficiently which is why potholes get formed. Moreover, the contractors use paver blocks to fill up the potholes.

This creates uneven patches on the road. The civic body does not bother to even supervise the repair work,” said Nandkumar Salvi, a former civic officer from the roads department.

"When the height of a road is increased, the height of the frame of the manhole, too, should be increased proportionally. But, more often than not, this crucial part is neglected,” said an official from the roads department.

“The potholes are filled with paver blocks, without any attention paid to quality,” said Rajkumar Sharma, from Action for Good Governance and Networking in India, an NGO.

GS Aggrawal, chief engineer, roads, too, admitted that the portion of a road, where a pothole has been filled with paver blocks, becomes dangerous in 1 or 2 years. Claiming that the BMC has found a solution, he said, “We have decided that mastic asphalt, and not paver blocks, will be used to fill potholes. It will help prevent the formation of potholes on the same road.”