Act against staff for playing cricket during duty hours, MNS netas to Ajoy Mehta

Mumbai: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) corporators on Tuesday met Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) commissioner Ajoy Mehta to demand strict action against the civic officials of G-North Ward as they were busy playing cricket on Monday during their working hours.

The issue became more serious as the civic body again failed to repair potholes by its final deadline of October 17.

Now, MCGM has started repair work on 300 roads, which, Mumbaikars feel, will create more pockmarks than filling them.

Sandeep Deshpande, MNS Corporator, said: “When we brought them on streets to blame them for the potholes in the city, they created a huge drama and decided to go on strike, filing a complaint against us. Playing cricket during working hours is something which is not appreciated. They deserve punishment and we demand strict action against the officers.”

MNS corporators Deshpande and Santosh Dhuri had humiliated a civic road engineer, Sanjay Darade, on October 5 by forcing him to hold a placard which read, “I am responsible for the potholes in the city”. After this incident, the civic engineers had filed an FIR in the Shivaji Park police station and decided to go on an indefinite strike.

However, what came up on Tuesday was that road engineer Darade along with his team wrote a letter to Mehta demanding security. An official from the road department said, “We require security as we will have to be extra careful while repairing the roads and fixing potholes. There are places which are scary and risky, especially at night. If not a security guard, at least a constable should be deployed.”

Civic Chief inspects road repair work

Mehta and Darade were on their toes for two days inspecting the road repair and pothole-filing work in the city – SV Road in Bandra, Shraddhanand Road in Vile Parle, NC Phadke Marg in Andheri, roads in Goregaon, Worli, Dadar, Wadala, Sion, Kurla, Chembur, Tilak nagar, Chunnabatti, Mankhurd and other parts of the city.

Project in the pipeline

A total of 1,004 roads are set to be repaired till May 2017.