The roads department has missed three deadlines for road repairs. It claims all potholes will be repaired by October 10.
The roads department has missed three deadlines for road repairs. It claims all potholes will be repaired by October 10.
As many as 200 potholes in Bandra and Mulund have been created due to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) hydraulics department, according to the civic body’s roads department. Engineers blamed BMC’s water distribution improvement project (WDIP) for the 200-odd potholes in these areas.
President of the Mumbai Mazdoor Union, Sukhdev Kashit, said that the Rs 15-crore pilot project had been started in two wards i.e. H (W) and T on an experimental basis, leading to digging up of roads in 200 places.
Civic engineers claimed that it took the department Rs 20 lakh to fix potholes caused by water pipeline repairs suggested under the WDIP. They also claimed that digging up roads at around 120 out of the 200 places proved to be futile as many minor leakages were found there.
Mr Kashit said, “The project is not even functional properly. Following its success in these two wards, it was supposed to start in two other wards. The contractors asked us to dig up 200 spots and only 80 of them had no leakages.”
Upon completion, the WDIP was supposed to add about 250 million litres of water to the existing water supply in the city. However, the project hit the roadblock after consultants employed demanded an additional supply of 50 million litres water per day per ward; a feat impossible to achieve in any city. The project was supposed to add water to the existing water supply by tapping about 17 per cent to 18 per cent leakages in water supply. Supplying additional water to each ward to meet the demands of the project would have defeated its very purpose.
The civic engineers’ union has now decided to approach the high court against the project. Mr Kashit said, “If this project continues in other wards, we will land up digging a lot of roads, and engineers will be blamed for bad roads again.”
Meanwhile, the BMC’s roads department will now seek help from traffic police and Mumbai police, for management and diversion of traffic, as it undertakes pothole repair work and the annual post-monsoon road repair work scheduled for October.
Even though the roads department has missed three deadlines for road repairs, the department claims all potholes will be repaired by October 10, a deadline set by the municipal commissioner following the face-off with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
