The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Wednesday announced that a digital dashboard will be created, to provide people with all information related to roadworks in the city. This will ensure adequate transparency in road concretisation work, and maintain smooth coordination between different civic departments, said officials. At present, the Storm Water Drains (SWD) department maintains a similar dashboard, which provides real-time data on pre-monsoon desilting work. To be sure, BMC has been facing backlash ever since Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced the Mumbai Road Concretisation project, which has been severely criticised by leaders from the opposition parties. The former elected representatives have also alleged that with only a month left for the rain to arrive, the civic body is yet to start pre-monsoon maintenance work in several roads at high-footfall Bandra area in the western suburbs. P Velrasu, additional municipal commissioner (projects), said that all the major road stretches would be taken up for concretisation immediately after the monsoon, as the clauses in the contract suggest that the work would continue for 24 months — excluding the season. The BMC on Wednesday said that its road department has started concretising several major roads in Mumbai, along with beautification projects and maintenance of footpaths. "The completion of the work involves recording substantial data and statistics. The idea to create the dashboard is to ensure that all data related to the progression of the maintenance and concretisation work, along with other policy related information, is made available to the public on the dashboard," said a civic official. BMC officials also maintained that some data to be made available on the dashboard include the timeframe of specified work, details about the defect liability period (DLP) of roads, and progression of road development along a stretch. Confirming the development, P Velrasu said that a fresh tender will be floated soon for appointing a consultant. The role of the consultant would include studying challenges faced by the department while working on the projects, coming up with desirable solutions, acquiring day-to-day data from the departments concerned, and collate everything before putting on the website. "We had floated a tender for this earlier, but it was not finalised. We will incorporate some additional details now, and float a new tender for appointing a consultant," Velrasu told The Indian Express on Wednesday. In a letter written to Velrasu on Tuesday, former corporator from Bandra (West) Asif Zakaria said that "while the work order for concretising and maintaining the roads in Bandra were issued several months ago, work on none of the sanctioned roads commenced, despite repeated reminders and requests". Zakaria wrote that several roads have been dug up and barricaded weeks ago, yet work does not seem to be in progress. Temporary repair works, however, were carried out on ward-level as some of the roads run along the G20 delegation route, he added. “Most of the work is supposed to be done in Mastic Asphalt, and the work for the same could easily be done patch-wise overnight, without any hindrances to traffic movement,” Zakaria told The Indian Express, adding that while the ward had written a letter to the BMC's road department, the approved contractor does not seem to be inclined in even starting the work, and claims that the junction works cannot be executed due to the lack of clarity in BMC, he added. "Shockingly, on all the roads sanctioned for development, the pre-monsoon maintenance of roads is to be carried out by the same appointed contractor." Velrasu said, "The total number of road stretches, in which work has started before the monsoon, is 50 only. Major road work in the remaining stretches will start immediately after monsoon, as the duration says 24 months — excluding the monsoon. Instructions have been issued."
