Five days of heavy to moderate rainfall has taken its toll on city roads and made their lack of maintenance obvious. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has counted 8,112 potholes on city roads in the last five days of rain.
The civic body now plans an investment of Rs15.5 core to redo these patches.
This after the BMC toiled to get rid of 8,500 potholes just before the monsoon. According to senior civic officials, however, the loss is far less than last year’s deluge, when some 24,000 potholes required surgery in the following months.
“This year the preparations were better than last year. Yet we are facing criticism from citizens and the judiciary. We appointed 24 agencies this year for road repairs as compared to last year’s 12. This time we have also, for the first time, appointed a third party to audit the quality of city roads,” said a senior civic official (requesting anonymity).
Civic officials also claim to have fined several contractors for doing shoddy work in covering the potholes this year, collecting Rs21 lakhs in fines from them.
