BBMP had recently claimed to have closed all potholes, but traffic police identified over a 1,000 potholes on the main roads in the last week of December in Bengaluru. File.
| Photo Credit: K. Bhagya Prakash
Even as the city roads refuse to be free of potholes, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) which had promised to launch the ‘FixMyStreet’ mobile application for the public to report potholes on city streets starting from January 1, has failed to do so till date.
In December 2022, BBMP Chief Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath had announced that the ‘FixMyStreet’ mobile application would be launched on January 1 where people can report potholes and once ratified by a civic official, the app will automatically generate a work order to fill them, an announcement welcomed by many including leading industrialists like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw.
This comes even as the civic body had recently claimed to have closed all potholes, but traffic police identified over a 1,000 potholes on the main roads in the last week of December. A total of six persons were killed in accidents due to potholes in the city in 2022 and Karnataka High Court recently directed police to register FIRs in case of pothole accidents in December.
The mobile app was launched in 2017 for the public. However, it was closed in 2019 due to technical issues. It has been alleged that the app was closed for public because of a barrage of complaints that the civic body was not able to keep track of. Sources said even now there is resistance to open the app for public.
A senior civic official said BBMP was serious and would open the app for public soon. “Earlier the app was available only for officials and now the app will be available to the general public. But the app has been updated with new features and the development of the application is causing the delay. There are some technical glitches which are being fixed by the officials. Once the app is launched, people can start sending the complaint regarding potholes on the app and it will have to be certified by the jurisdictional assistant engineer. Once certified, the work order gets generated automatically. In case of major roads, it will go to the ‘Python’ contractor who has been entrusted with the maintenance of 182 km of arterial and sub-arterial roads. In case of other stretches, the work order will be sent to the hot mix plant,” the official explained.
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