BMC to give engineers new phones and SIM cards to tackle pothole complaints

MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to provide engineers with mobile phones and SIM cards after they refused to entertain citizens’ pothole-related complaints on their personal numbers that were published by the civic body in newspapers a few days back.

The engineers were upset with the BMC for giving out their personal numbers and had said they were receiving calls even on holidays and off-duty hours. Some engineers had protested by not answering calls or keeping their phones switched off. This piled up pothole complaints or went unreported.

The civic administration has now decided to purchase 54 smartphones for the road engineers. The phones will be used only for official purposes and for hearing out pothole-related complaints. After the rainy season, the handsets will be kept with the complaint officer for other civic plaints.

“Engineers were upset after we shared their personal number with the public, but we also realised that this was a good way to report complaints and so we decided to address the issue and will equip them with official numbers. The proposal has been forwarded by the roads department for further approvals,” said a senior official.

Chief engineer (roads) Sanjay Darade confirmed the development, but refused to give further details.

The BMC had launched a mobile application to report potholes after scrapping the earlier system of reporting potholes on a website. But citizens were complaining about the inefficiency of the App and the failure in registering the potholes on the App. The BMC had to launch alternate methods to register pothole complaints, and then it decided to make the numbers of the engineers public.

According to the BMC data there are only 171 potholes left to be attended in the city as on Monday. The number was 192 last year. The data also show that B-ward(bhendi Bazaar) E-ward (Byculla), G-north and G-south (Shivaji Park and Worli), H-west (Bandra), M-west (Chembur), R-north (Dahisar) have no potholes.