Fill potholes within 24 hours of complaint, BMC chief tells ward officials

Potholes on a busy street in Kurla West. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

Even as the monsoon is nearing an end, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) seems to have woken up to citizens' woes over the bad state of roads in the city only now. Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal held an online meeting with all ward officials and instructed them to take steps to fill the potholes at the earliest.

A day after mid-day reported on the delay in filling of potholes, the civic chief directed that once potholes are noticed, they should be filled within 24 hours. However, BMC has claimed that they have filled up more than 40,000 potholes since April, but continuous rains over the past few days have led to resurgence. This will be tackled on war footing as instructed by the commissioner, said officials.

The civic chief has given officials three to four weeks' time to make all roads pothole-free. All assistant municipal commissioners, road engineers and other engineers of ward officers have been asked to inspect city roads to identify and report potholes. These will then be mapped on the plans and fixed on priority. Chahal was seemingly upset with the bad state of roads as pointed out by several citizens on social media. There are 147 kms of roads in the city at various stages of work which are to be attended by the BMC roads department.

Further, around 625 kms of roads are in defect liability period, which means the contractors are responsible for filling up the potholes. Apart from these, there are around 1,087 kms of roads that fall under the responsibility of assistant municipal commissioners and ward officials. Ward offices have been instructed to send their requirement of cold material as per the quantum of work in their jurisdictions within two days and collect the same from the civic agency on priority.

"Assistant commissioners have been instructed to make early morning rounds personally, to ask road engineers and other staff of the ward to visit all roads in the ward to identify potholes. The potholes must be mapped on the plan within two days so that no potholes are missed out. They also have been instructed to take weekly review meetings," said a civic official who was a part of the meeting. The civic body has also requested the traffic police to address the issue of potholes and manage traffic on major roads with potholes.

147 km
Roads under various stages of work

625 km
Roads in defect liability period