Activist’s bid to upload pothole pics hits cloud hurdle

Rain rain go away, officials want to upload pictures of potholes online. This may sound bizarre, but a Matunga-based civic activist was at the receiving end of such an experience.

Nikhil Desai registered complaints related to potholes on the Dinshaw Master Road in Dadar’s Parsi Colony on the BMC pothole tracking portal. Following registration, a sub-engineer from the BMC’s F-North (Matunga) ward visited the site. Wielding an android phone, the engineer tried to take images of potholes on the road several times, but in vain.

Reason? The cloud cover above his head affected the uploading of images. “Despite making at least 20 attempts, the photographs could not be uploaded.  The pictures finally got published when the engineer visited the spot again,” Desai said.

Additional municipal commissioner, Aseem Gupta, said the problem could have cropped up in the wake of weak cell phone network.

An official from Probity Soft, the firm that has developed the tracking system, though conceded that cloud cover does affect the uploading process. The official said that since the technology is Global Positioning System (GPS)-based, it has to rely on fixed satellites to remain functional.

“But when clouds hover over the city, the system’s functioning gets interrupted. Nobody can do anything about it,” he added. The official said that there is another option to upload photographs in such scenarios and that all civic engineers have already been briefed about the same.