Mumbai: Citizens report more potholes than BMC

Even as more potholes appear on Mumbai's roads every day, the BMC's road engineers, who are supposed to keep a check on them, seem yet to gear up.

Even as more potholes appear on Mumbai's roads every day, the BMC's road engineers, who are supposed to keep a check on them, seem yet to gear up.

Of the 270 potholes reported on the civic body’s tracking system www.voiceofcitizen.com in the past week, around 170 have been by citizens, while the engineers have reported only about 100.

Road engineers are assigned certain number of roads in a ward by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), and are responsible for their maintenance. They are supposed to go for road visits, identify potholes, click their pictures and upload them on the tracking system. They then have to assign a contractor to fill the pothole. Once filled, the contractor has to report it online with a picture of the repaired road.

Of the 270 potholes reported online so far, only 89 were repaired by Wednesday evening. The rest are yet to be acted upon, a report on the website has revealed.

Senior civic officials said engineers are working on reporting the potholes. “It is a continuous process and we have asked our engineers to start reporting the potholes they spot. There aren’t many potholes on the roads as of now,” said SVR Srinivas, the additional municipal commissioner who heads the roads department.

Once a road engineer uploads a photo and assigns it to a contractor, the pothole needs to be closed within 48 hours, failing which the civic body can penalise the contractor.

Though the BMC had resurfacing more than 1,000 roads before the monsoon , potholes have started appearing in the first few days of heavy rain.

* Wards with most number of potholes:

H west [Bandra (West), Khar]: 42

A ward (Colaba, Nariman Point): 38

L ward (Kurla): 29

K east (Andheri): 25

* To register a pothole:

Log on to www.voiceofcitizen.com and upload the pothole’s picture

The road engineer concerned and the contractor will attended to the pothole and upload the picture of the repaired road.