Civic body to 'gift' engineers cars for Mumbai's pothole inspection

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to allot brand new cars to its road engineers to take care of the city’s potholes. Ironically, last year, not a single road engineer was fined for not filling up the potholes during monsoon.

On Wednesday, the civic standing committee approved the proposal to appoint a contractor to provide 40 cars on a hire basis for one year.

As per the proposal, the hired cars with minimum engine capacity of 1000cc with tourist permission will be non air-conditioned.

A car will be allowed to be used for 25 days in a month with a cap of 2,000 km and 295 hours. Civic officials said that the decision was taken to make the work of road engineers more effective.

“The road engineers have complained about unavailability of vehicles resulting in difficulties in inspecting potholes,” said a senior civic official.   

However, the civic body has made stringent conditions for the contractor to provide the vehicles. “If the contractor fails to provide a vehicle, penalty of Rs600 per day will be levied on a car,” said the official adding that a penalty of Rs500 per day will levied if engine of a car fails.