With its expensive pothole filling jet-patching machines lying unused for over a year,the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to make some technical modifications in the machines to make them usable. After incurring an expense of Rs 72 crore in the purchase and maintenance of these machines that barely filled two to three per cent of the potholes across city roads since 2008,the BMC will spend some more money to make them more useful. Additional Municipal Commissioner (roads) Aseem Gupta said since the machines have not been utilised at all since last March due to technical glitches,the BMC is trying to make some modifications. We are assessing the feasibility of some technical modifications that can enable us to use the machines effectively. We will have to incur some expenses for that. But again,the problem of the machines size will remain and therefore we will not be able to use them as much as we would like to, said Gupta. The roads department is working out the modifications along with the Standing Technical Advisory Committee (STAC). The BMC drew a lot of flak for importing the expensive machines without the recommendation of the STAC,which maintained that the technology is not usable in Mumbai due to various reasons. The contract for using the machines expired on March 31 last year after which it has not been re-awarded. Because of technical challenges involved while using them,such as minimum width of road,size of potholes etc,the contract was not renewed till now. Moreover,BMC engineers are unaware of how to use these machines as they were imported from US-based Speco Infrastructure that was also awarded a contract for operating and maintaining them at a cost of Rs 68 crore for two years.
