As Monsoon Nears Bmc Pauses Road Concretisation Works To Resume In October

s achieved 80.63 per cent of its road concretisation target so far.

The work forms a part of the ambitious Rs 17,700-crore mega concretisation project under which the BMC has taken the cudgels to pave 713 km of city’s roads in concrete.

The project was announced in 2022 by former Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, in a bid to make Mumbai’s roads pothole free.

Tenders for the first phase that seeks to concretise 325 km of road network were awarded in January, 2023, while the tenders for the second phase were awarded in August in 2024.

Three year since the work commenced, the BMC, until June 5, has been able to achieve 80.6 percent of its actual target.

Records accessed by The Indian Express showed that when the work came to a halt on June 5, 574.88 km km of the roads had been concretised across the city. Of this, 89 per cent or 290 km of roads have been concretised in the first phase of the project while 73.30 per cent of the phase 2 targets have been achieved by the civic body.

However, over the next four monsoon months spanning from June and October, civil works on the concretisation project will remain suspended owing to the onset of monsoon.

“The overall process of concretisation is executed in three stages which entails excavation, filling of the portion with dry-lean concrete and then finally matching the surface of the road with pavement quality concrete. This is later left for a curing period. However, during rains, we can’t either pour concrete on excavated roads nor leave the fresh concrete for drying,” a senior official explained.

Even with 575 km of road works completed, concretisation work on 10 per cent of roads is yet to commence. As per civic dashboard, a large number of such roads are concentrated in the island city division.

The maximum number of roads where concretisation is yet to take off are situated in the B ward – 39, followed by 31 roads in D ward, 28 roads in E ward and 25 roads in the F/North ward.

Pockets like Borivali, Dahisar, Kandivali, and Goregaon have a maximum number of concretised roads. Officials have attributed the skewed work progress to a delay in tenders of phase two works which largely encompasses the island city division.

To tackle pothole complaints across the city, the civic body has deployed 65 mastic cookers across 26 wards to fill potholes of which 52 are owned by the BMC while 13 are rented.

This marks a jump from the previous year when the civic body deployed 59 cookers of which an average of 8-10 cookers were used on a daily basis. “We are expecting fewer pothole complaints in areas with concretised roads. We will be closely monitoring the roads. Similarly, the possibility of complaints may be higher in areas where there are fewer concretised roads. We will be closely monitoring the roads and fixing the potholes at the earliest using mastic cookers,” added a senior official.

Earlier this week, civic commissioner Ashwini Bhide took stock of the monsoon preparedness where she directed BMC departments to address all pothole complaints within 24 hours.