At a time when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is making big plans to qualify for the Centre’s ambitious smart city project, its smartness has been found wanting when it comes to using social media for public awareness. The civic body’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter, two of the most popular social media sites, are lagging way behind in dealing with people’s grievances about civic problems.
The BMC’s Twitter handle consists of only monsoon updates. All the 1,107 tweets made by the civic body have been about weather forecasts. The BMC has also been lethargic about posting regular updates. The last post made by the civic body on its Twitter account was on October 15.
Although the BMC has 1,027 followers on its Twitter account, the public response has been quite low as people do not seem to be too interested in reading just weather updates.
The civic body’s Facebook account is also no better as the last post made by the BMC on Facebook was way back on May 7, 2014, showing the then mayor Sunil Prabhu seeking help from the state government and Centre to make Mumbai an ideal city. It means the present mayor Snehal Ambekar and municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta find no mention on the BMC’s Facebook account.
However, the response to this account is much better than its Twitter handle. The account has been liked by 1,148 people, still a miniscule number considering that Facebook is used by a large number of people. However, people have been seen making queries and registering complaints about civic problems faced by them on the BMC’s Facebook timeline. But there seems to be no effort from the civic administration to respond to their queries, let alone solving them.
Congress corporator Asif Zakaria slammed the BMC’s “lackadaisical” approach on maintaining these accounts. “The BMC is vying for smart city project and here its own social media sites are in a pathetic state. Despite this, the municipal commissioner in a statement issued recently has claimed that the civic body’s Twitter handle has been appreciated by all. It only means he is trying to mislead people.” Despite repeated attempts, additional municipal commissioner S.V.R. Srinivas, who handles the IT department, was unavailable for comments.
