Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has taken up concretization of all roads in Mumbai to rid them of potholes once and for all. However, the work is going on a slow pace and it is likely to take two years to make all the roads concrete. Like every year, the pothole tracking system will be used to find potholes on roads this monsoon. The system will be operational from June 1 to October 31. Citizens will be able to take pictures of potholes and register their complaints on the app. The divisional offices of the civic body will take immediate cognizance of it and try to take care of the problem.
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Every year, before the monsoon, the BMC's roads department starts plugging potholes. The work continues until September. Crores of rupees are spent on it. Yet, the problem of potholes persists throughout the rainy season, causing inconvenience to citizens and drivers
Since 2011, the pothole tracking system has been used by all divisional engineers and the Central Roads Department to ensure that potholes can be plugged immediately and citizens can report potholes. Citizens also responded well to this unique system.
The engineers were taking precautions to plug the potholes within 48 hours as the website was being monitored by seniors. However, for some reason, the website's contract expired on April 1, 2016, and the system was shut down in the intervening period. However, given the effectiveness of the system, the civic body has also launched a pothole detection drive with the help of the app.
Potholes from previous years:
1) 2020 65,6172) 2021 43,4783) 2022 38,3104) 2023 71,773 (as of September)
How to File a Complaint: Citizens can take pictures of potholes and register their complaints on the mobile app along with the location. The complaint is reported to the road engineers of the respective wards. In the app, the information of all divisional engineers is fed according to their divisional boundaries. Therefore, the complaint filed is received only by the engineer concerned. The complainant also gets information about the action taken on his complaint. Engineers also take a picture of the potholes and report on the app that they have resolved the complaint.