Urban News

This week, one of the machines was rolled out of the Santacruz workshop where they have been parked since the last monsoon after two administrative wards — F South and S — responded to the civic administration’s directive to send in requests for them. The other 22 wards did not react.

Civic officials say the machines are simply unsuitable for Mumbai. They cannot be used to repair smaller roads, and the jet-patching is useful only for potholes that are at least 2 ft by 2 ft in size, and of a specific shape.

“They are unfit for use in such weather and on Indian roads,” said a senior officer who declined to be named.

A V Ralkar, Chief Engineer (Roads), conceded that the response to the machine has been “very dull”. “Nobody is willing to use these machines for pothole repairs this year,” he said.

Ralkar said that the road must be dry for the machines to work. “This year, it has rained continuously, so it has become very difficult to repair potholes.” He agreed that the BMC or its contractors do not have the time or resources to reshape potholes to make them suitable for filling by the machines.

The machines, built by the US-based Speco Infrastructure, were purchased last year — one each for the eastern suburbs, western suburbs and the island city. They use asphalt instead of a cold mix. Once the material is loaded, the machine cleans the pothole using compressed air before filling it in. 

“Last year too, very limited use was made of these machines,” Ralkar said. And this year, the only time they were used was to demonstrate their working for Mayor Shraddha Jadhav last week. Last month, guardian minister Jayant Patil took civic officials for a drive to show them just how bad the city’s roads were.

Maintenance officers from various wards now say the BMC contractors find it easier to repair roads manually rather than with these machines, which renders them practically useless.

While the BMC paid Rs 68 crore to contractors who were given the order of using and maintaining these machines, the company says it was unable to use the machines to keep roads pothole-free. The contractor’s bill was raised, in fact, for manual repairs to potholes. “The bill we asked for was for manual repair of potholes,” said Nitin Shah, director of Speco Infrastructure. “We were given a contract to repair potholes across Mumbai for two years. Our contract expired last October.” The contract with Speco was originally for Rs 4 crore, but costs escalated due to manual pothole repair work, Ralkar confirmed.

The BMC administration claimed in June that it spent Rs 68 crore in the past 12 months on maintaining the three jet-patching machines. The standing committee had passed the proposal regarding the increase in “operations and maintenance costs” of the machines from Rs 4 crore to Rs 68 crore, a 17-fold escalation. Standing committee chairman Rahul Shewale had said while passing the proposal that the cost escalation was due to “double patching instead of single patching” and because the machines were used for ward-level works too though they’d been purchased only for repairs to major roads. The BMC had spent over Rs 100 crore on pothole repairs last year. This year, Rs 40 crore has been allocated for pothole repairs.