There will be no respite from pothole-riddled roads anytime soon with the civic body on Monday admitting that it was unable to meet its self-imposed deadline of October 10 for repairing them.
There will be no respite from pothole-riddled roads anytime soon with the civic body on Monday admitting that it was unable to meet its self-imposed deadline of October 10 for repairing them. Instead, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now extended the deadline for repairs till October 25.
The BMC’s roads department said it would comply with the latest deadline by working round-the-clock though it refused to quantify the unfinished work, saying its officials would rather fill up the potholes than spend time counting them.
Shalini Thackeray, general secretary of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), has meanwhile threatened to “spoil the civic engineers’ Dussera and Diwali celebrations” if bad roads continue to feature in the festival season.
Two MNS corporators had last week humiliated the roads department’s chief engineer in public for not repairing the potholes. Chief engineer of roads Sanjay Darade said, “As per orders, we will not count potholes in the remaining 15 days. Our engineers will be busy working on them, so we cannot keep track of how many potholes are there, or how many have been repaired.”
“We do not want the business of counting the number of potholes. We do not even know the percentage of potholes fixed, but we are working round-the-clock,” Mr Darade added.
Earlier, the BMC would publish a ward wise list of the number of potholes reported, fixed and remaining. It sent the last update over five days ago, citing that there were only 53 potholes on the city roads.
Subsequently, Samajwadi Party initiated a drive to count the number of potholes on South Mumbai roads and counted 50 in one area alone. Facing much flak from citizens and political parties, the BMC has now called off the procedure.
On Monday, additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Deshmukh, who heads the BMC’s roads department promised the civic body would repair all potholes within 15 days. Speaking to protesting MNS party workers he said, “Just give us 15 days. There will be no potholes on the streets.”
Mr Deshmukh refused to comment on the October 10 deadline already missed by the roads department. Over 50 MNS party workers led by Ms Thackeray protested at the BMC headquarters on Monday . A party worker said, “If our corporators can go behind the bars for no fault of theirs, just to ensure Mumbaikars get good roads, why can’t engineers do their duty and finish work on time.”
