The civic body said a total of 2,611 potholes were repaired in June and July, and it spent over Rs 52 lakh for the repair work. (Express File Photo)
Barraged with criticism and complaints over the large number of potholes that have popped up across the city this monsoon, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has claimed that the number of potholes on city roads is barely over 3,500, and most of them have been repaired.
After the issue was raised by corporator Rafiq Sheikh in the PMC general body meeting, the civic administration, in a written reply, said a total of 3,532 potholes were reported till the end of July, and most of them have been repaired. The maximum number of potholes — 814 — was reported in the jurisdiction of Hadapsar-Mundhwa ward office, while Dhole-Patil ward office area had the fewest potholes — 25.
The civic body said a total of 2,611 potholes were repaired in June and July, and it spent over Rs 52 lakh for the repair work. But, said the PMC, more potholes surfaced all over the city due to heavy rain in the first week of August.
The PMC has an online facility where local residents can register their complaints. While as many as 5,785 complaints have been registered on road conditions, not all of them are about potholes. The civic body also received complaints about dumping of debris, damaged stormwater drains and damaged footpaths.
The civic body said it has spent Rs 6.88 crore on repairing city roads in the last five years.
PMC to carry out repair work, no water supply in city tomorrow
Water supply across Pune will be cut off on Thursday as the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has to carry out urgent maintenance and repair work at all its pumping and water purification units.
“There is need for urgent repair and maintenance work at Parvati water works, the raw water pumping station, Vadgaon water works, Cantonment water works, SNDT-Warje water works and the New Holkar pumping station. The water supply for the entire city will be cut off on Thursday,” said Sanjay More, public relations officer of PMC.
He said the water supply will be restored late on Friday so local residents may get low-pressure supply initially.
Back in June, the PMC had introduced water cuts due to the delayed arrival of monsoon. The supply was restored after heavy rainfall in August, and when it kept on raining, the Water Resource department had to release a large quantity of water from all the four dams near Pune — Khadakwasla, Panshet, Varasgaon and Temghar — after they were filled to their capacity. The dams are now 100 per cent full and have a total quantity of 29.15 TMC (one thousand million cubic feet) of water.
