Mumbai civic emergency lifeline, 1916, the 24/7 helpline of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for reporting issues and emergencies, faced multiple disruptions during this monsoon, with the latest outage, on Tuesday, September 1, lasting over six hours. The downtime, attributed by Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) officials to technical issues with its telephone exchange, briefly affected citizens trying to reach the BMC, even as the civic body’s disaster management operations continued through alternative helplines and communication networks.

Civic officials familiar with the matter said on Thursday that two major disruptions were observed this monsoon, “a number that is much less compared to the past. Still, discussions are on to switch to an operator with less downtime, similar to how our internal hotline was migrated to a private operator in April this year,” said an official.