Mumbai: After Thursday’s deadly bridge collapse, which occurred despite a structural audit, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now woken up and decided to re-audit all 296 bridges that were audited in 2016.
Municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta has also ordered for a full-fledged chief bridges inspector who will be in charge of the Bridge Inspection Authority of the BMC.
Mr Mehta took the decision in the light of the preliminary report by BMC officers on the FOB collapse, which stated that the structural audit was carried irresponsibility and BMC staff also failed in their supervision duties.
The municipal commissioner in his order said, “The BMC operates approximately 374 bridges. It is now necessary to have a chief inspector for br-idges. The Bridge Inspect-ion Authority will perform tasks like deciding the frequency at whi-ch various bridges should be inspected, enumerating the inspection carried at different frequencies, defi-ning the formats of audit reports, defining responsibilities of bridges maintenance engineers a-nd recommending remedial measures if a bridge is in a dangerous condition.”
The auditors had reported that 110 were in a good condition, 107 required minor repairs, 61 required needed major repairs and 18 structures must be
demolished.
Mr Mehta in order also slammed the engineers in BMC deployed in the bridges department around 2013 for carrying out substandard work on the FOB that collapsed on Thursday.
