Received 85 pothole complaints on app: Civic officials

A month after the civic body inaugurated a mobile application enabling citizens to report potholes, it claims it has received only 85 complaints and has addressed all of them.

Despite anticipating a heavy monsoon this year, officials from the roads department are confident that the city’s roads will see fewer potholes, as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has taken all the necessary precautions.

A senior roads department official said, “We are expecting not more than 2,000 potholes this year, which is a good number considering our record. We registered over 20,000 potholes in 2014, but managed to bring down the number to 6,000 last year.”

In the beginning of this month, the BMC launched an app for that allows citizens to report potholes. To report a pothole, citizens are expected to click a photo of it at the location itself, and upload it on the app. The app then automatically generates the latitudinal and longitudinal details of the pothole and routes the information to the concerned ward, which is expected to act on the complaint within 24 hours. Citizens can also get real time updates of the status of their complaints by punching in their complaint number.

As the BMC’s pothole repair work contract found no takers, the BMC was forced to hand over the work to existing road contractors undertaking pre-monsoon road repairs. The roads department said this would work in BMC’s favour as the roads would continue to be in the defect liability period when the contractor repairs these potholes. Further, the potholes could be repaired pronto, once the workers notice the gravel coming off, and signs of a possible pothole.