Water recedes, potholes emerge

MUMBAI: As the city enjoyed a reprieve from rain on Thursday after being battered for five days, the civic administration got its first clear view of the extent of devastation.

An initial survey has shown that the 1,000mm rainfall that inundated the city has left 50 mangled road patches consisting of at least 100 potholes each in 24 municipal wards. This means 1,20,000 potholes have appeared in the city. The cost of filling them is estimated to be Rs3 crore. That figure was not factored into the initial outlay of Rs40 crore apportioned for road repairs scheduled to be carried out before the Ganesh Chathurthi festival.

“The roads that have failed us are old,” said Johny Joseph, Mumbai’s municipal commissioner. “We need at least five years to redo 1,941km of the city’s roads.” All 11 projects to lay asphalt roads, undertaken in accordance with the guidelines of the Merani Committee, were in South Mumbai. As for the suburbs, chaos reigns between Bandra and Dahisar, and Sion and Mulund, as the BMC and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority shove the blame for poor roads on each other.