Additional Municipal Commissioner Ashwini Joshi addressed people's concerns regarding monsoon preparedness at an event held at Yacht Club on Thursday. Questions ranged from SMS alerts to fire safety.
Ms. Joshi was speaking at an event organised by V Citizens Action Network (VCAN) at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club on Thursday. The organisation holds an event called Social Sanchar, wherein they invite officials to speak on important issues. While a similar event was held on the plastic ban last year, this year’s topic was monsoon preparedness.
Prepared for disaster
Since Ms. Joshi handles the disaster management and fire brigade in BMC, VCAN had invited her to speak on ‘Monsoon challenges: disaster preparedness’.
Ms. Joshi began by giving a presentation on the civic body’s measures including desilting done, storm water pumps readied and trees trimmed ahead of the monsoon. “This year, communication is our top priority. We have made disaster management’s Twitter handle active. Apart from the main control room, we have 52 control rooms across the city. We have already published all numbers on our website,” she said.
“Our lives are associated with BMC right from birth to death. They provide us services but we also need to co-operate with them and do our bit,” said Indrani Malkani of VCAN.
Ms. Joshi then took questions from the crowd at the event and those being asked live via Twitter and SMS.
Dr. Surendra Soneji, via SMS, asked her if citizens could get hourly SMS of flooded roads, building collapses and roads blocked due to accidents
To which Ms. Joshi said, “We are in process of tying up with BSNL to provide SMS broadcasts. Telephone operating companies provide this service in tie-up to ensure important alerts reach their entire database. Meanwhile, other modes of communication are active.”
Of fire safety
Several people also asked Ms. Joshi about fire safety on the backdrop of the incident at a coaching class in Surat.
As a response, she said, “We are aggressively monitoring coaching classes for fire safety violations. We will check if there are construction violations also.”
Deputy chief fire officer H.D. Parab, who was also present on the occasion, further expanded on this question. “Across the world, the height of fire brigade’s ladders cannot be equal to the building’s height. That is why the fire safety measures in the building have to be used and maintained properly,” he said.
VCAN also distributed a list of high tide days and another list of control room numbers at the occasion.