The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief Praveen Pardeshi has directed ward officials to identify potholes and bad patches in their areas everyday between 6am and 8am, before most Mumbaiites step out, and fix them immediately. The ward officials have also been asked to take workers along to fix these roads.

Pardeshi told HT, “Instead of waiting to act on complaints, we have decided to proactively identify bad patches [on roads] and fix them. The officials have been told to do this early in the morning before traffic begins.”

He said they are also analysing the complaints they receive via Twitter.

“The problem can be with the type of road, type of drainage system around the road among others,” Pardeshi said.

The complaints of bad patches on roads received via Twitter are categorised according to the type of roads, craters, areas and drainage system.

A former road engineer of BMC said the civic body identifies four types of craters: cavity, trenches, paver block and loose gravel.

While cavity and trenches are craters around manholes or utility covers, paver block craters are formed owing to sinking of blocks, and loose gravel craters owing to poor quality of roads with heavy traffic. Apart from these, all craters are considered potholes.

A senior civic official, on condition of anonymity said, “We have been asked to proactively identify bad patches [on roads] and fix them. Our road engineers will be taking rounds of every ward early in the morning.”

DM Sukhtankar, former BMC chief and chairman of NGO AGNI, said, “It is a good move, as citizens will not have to keep complaining to the ward offices. Also, they can gauge if the civic body has done a satisfactory job on repairing the bad patches.”

First Published: Jul 24, 2019 01:05 IST