Civic body misses June 1 deadline for desilting nullahs and repairing potholes, sets a new target of June 4
Civic body misses June 1 deadline for desilting nullahs and repairing potholes, sets a new target of June 4
If the city gets flooded this rainy season, blame the BMC as the civic body has failed to complete its pre-monsoon work in time. The BMC, which had promised to complete desiltation of nullahs and repairing of potholes by yesterday, has failed to keep its promise. The civic body had initially set a May 31 deadline for desiltation of nullahs and a June 1 target for repairing potholes. Now, BMC officials have set a new deadlineu00a0-- June 4u00a0-- and claim to penalise contractors who are allegedly responsible for delaying the work. BMC Commissioner Subodh Kumar had promised completing the task before the deadlines, but figures available show only 80 per cent of the job is done. 
Drained out: Workers toil to clear up the clogged nullahs before the
monsoon. File pic
A BMC official said, "The desiltation as well as the filling of potholes would take another four-five days. The desiltation of Mithi River is also behind time lest 60 per cent of the 11 km-long water body falls under BMC jurisdiction." However, chief engineer of storm water drains, L Vhatkar, said, "Only 10 per cent of desiltation work is left at Mithi River. Already 42,000 cubic meters silt has been removed and now only 10,000 cubic metres is left."u00a0 He added that the major nullah works will be completed by the end of this week.
Out of 319 km of nullahs snaking through the city, 274 km of drains have already been desilted. "Before monsoon 70 per cent work should be done of which we have done more than 83 per cent. The rest will be completed soon," he said. The BMC has removed 3.72 lakh cubic metres silt from nullahs out of the targeted 4.45 lakh cubic metres. The civic body has offloaded only 3.17 lakh cubic metres silt to the dumping ground.
Money matters
The department has till now collected a penalty of Rs 25.68 lakh from the contractors who had defaulted as per the conditions mentioned in the tender. Deputy chief engineer (roads) S Badve said action would be taken against the contractors for delaying the work on the ward level. "Since the central agency has not awarded the contracts for road repairing, the ward officers would have to take action against the contractors for failing to complete the work on time as per the conditions mentioned in the tender," he said.
This year, the BMC had made a list of locations with the maximum number of potholes. If Western suburbs have 1,354 locations, Eastern suburbs have 382 and Island city 459. The worst three suburbs, having maximum number of potholes, are Dahisar, Malad, and Bandra West.u00a0BMC standing committee chairperson Rahul Shewale said, "The work would get completed in a few days and there would be action taken against the defaulters also. We do not want the citizens to suffer because of this." Despite several attempts Commissioner Subodh Kumar and Additional Municipal Commissioner Aseem Gupta could not be contacted for comment.
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