Mumbai rains: Are BMC engineers too busy to fix potholes?

Pratiksha Nagar in Sion was dotted with potholes after a brief shower spell this morning. Pic/ Atul Kamble

If you spot a pothole on the road this monsoon, and plan to report it to the road engineers of the BMC, be assured that nothing good is going to come out of it. A day after the civic body made available numbers of 24 road engineers to deal with pothole-related issues in the city, mid-day put 11 of the numbers to test, and found that most of the calls had gone unanswered.

The BMC decided to make the numbers of its engineers public, following a Bombay high court order last year.

However, on day 1 of the numbers being made available, several people complained about not being able to get through the engineers. "I noticed a pothole on the road and sent a Whatsapp message with the location and photo to the number provided, but to my surprise the engineer asked me for the location again. When I tried calling him, I didn't get a response," claimed Godfrey Pimenta, a social activist.

When mid-day tried calling on 11 of these numbers, we received next to zero response. Of the 11 numbers, five calls went unanswered, three were unavailable, two switched off and one was disconnected.

"This is just a gimmick. The BMC should pull up road engineers for not attending to the complaints," said Nikhil Desai, social activist.

Pratiksha Nagar in Sion was dotted with potholes after a brief shower spell this morning. Pic/ Atul Kamble

Asked why engineers weren't responding to the calls, Sanjay Darade, chief engineer (roads), BMC said, "We had checked the numbers before publishing it in the newspapers. The assistant municipal commissioner will direct the engineers to ensure that their numbers are available at all times."

Apart from sharing the numbers of road engineers, the civic body has introduced the MCGM 24×7 app, where people can share location details of the potholes. However, several users have given it bad reviews on Google Play Store.