Citizens to monitor BMC’s ₹5,800 crore road concretisation work

Mumbai Weeks after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) floated a ₹5,800 crore tender to concretise Mumbai roads, citizen forums have come forward to monitor the day-to-day progress of works in an attempt to ensure transparency.

The Mumbai Citizen’s Forum (MCF) is a citizen’s association group formed by former police commissioner Sanjay Pandey and has close to 200 active members. Members of this forum said that they will deploy volunteers across the city to monitor road works on a regular basis.

City-based activist Debi Goenka, who is an advisor to the forum, said that members will be given training on technicality before being deployed on the field.

“Every year, BMC floats tenders worth crores. However, the quality of the road doesn’t improve at all. This year, they have floated the biggest road tender in the history of BMC. Therefore, we decided to monitor all the construction works at our personal capacity,” Goenka said.

He further added that he approached municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal for the tender documents. The members of the forum are also going through the documents and examining clauses.

“There are certain parameters of road works which include digging till a particular level and the thickness of the concrete-all these need to be examined carefully. We will train the junior members of our group by holding training sessions so that they understand these parameters once they are on the field,” Goenka said.

Kedar Diwan, another member of the forum, said that one key issue this forum wants to focus is on ensuring that utility ducts are laid in a proper manner and the surfaces are not dug up soon after completion of the construction.

“We have seen that as soon as a road is completed, contractors dig it up for laying utility cables. Following which, the contractor does a shoddy patchwork, eventually leading to potholes. We will be paying serious attention to this in our visits,” said Diwan.

Meanwhile, a senior official of the civic body said that any citizen can monitor the ongoing road works as the BMC will put up QR codes in the barricades. “If you scan the QR codes, you will be redirected to a website where there will be video feeds of the construction works available,” said a senior official.

“This year we have also put in a tender condition stating that separate channels for laying utility cables will be created during the time of concretisation only so that there is no requirement of digging the road frequently,” the official said.

After chief minister Eknath Shinde’s promise of making Mumbai a pothole-free city in the next two years, BMC floated a ₹5,800 crore to concretise Mumbai roads, which will lead to minimisation of potholes. According to the BMC data, the city has a road network of 2,000 kilometres and around 1,000 kilometres is already being concretised.