Systemic flaws give potholes extra time

The civic body had hoped to counter the annual monsoon problem by making citizens play the role of pothole inspectors, and empowering them with up-to-date technology. However, inherent technical and administrative flaws continue to render the system ineffective. Reetika Subramanian and Kunal Purohit report.

The civic body had hoped to counter the annual monsoon problem by making citizens play the role of pothole inspectors, and empowering them with up-to-date technology. However, inherent technical and administrative flaws continue to render the system ineffective.

HT Image

In a three-day-long test run of the pothole-tracking system conducted earlier this week, HT found that of the 17 complaints of potholes and poor roads in the city, most potholes were left unattended to, while some others were filled shoddily.

One of the biggest flaws of the eight-month-old system is that there is no way to access it if you do not own an Android phone. Following criticism, the company, Probity Soft, said that photos clicked from ordinary cameras and uploaded on their Facebook page will be attended to as well.

However, HT had posted two pothole complaints on the software's Facebook page to check the response and found that while the designated 'Report Pothole Here' application was not functioning, neither the company nor the agency in charge of filling potholes responded to the complaints.

"We have been busy creating awareness about the software and have not found the time to attend to our Facebook page," said Shantanu Kulkarni of Probity Soft. "We will have to check if there has been a technical snag in the application and will appoint one company official from Wednesday to attend to all Facebook plaints," he added.

In addition, the software, which is based on the geographical positioning system, often fails to plot addresses of potholes correctly [see box].

HT had earlier reported that a nexus between engineers and contractors was subverting the system. Officials wrongly assign potholes to another agency despite it being their responsibility, only to give more time to the contractor to fill it.

Moreover, several plotted areas have been assigned to wrong civic wards on the website. "We have created a software for ward officials, who will have to transfer the complaint to the respective wards," said Kulkarni.

The company said the flaws would be corrected soon.