Pune: As roads continue to bear the scars of a week of heavy monsoon rain, Pune Municipal Corporation’s dedicated cellphone application for reporting potholes and damaged roads has itself hit a roadblock, leaving frustrated residents with one less avenue to flag worsening conditions.PMC attributed the disruption to a technical glitch and said the app, PMC Road Mitra, was expected to be restored by Tuesday. The residents, however, argued that the malfunction reflected a larger problem — a sluggish response to the city’s rapidly deteriorating road network. “This is not the first time the PMC’s road complaint app has stopped working. When the primary platform for raising complaints fails, the actual number of grievances never gets reflected,” Kothrud resident Vivek Kulkarni said.Although PMC has pressed road repair vans into service, commuters said the extent of damage across the city far outweighed the ongoing patchwork efforts. Chandu Satav, a Nagar Road resident, said several stretches repaired ahead of last year’s international cycling event had already succumbed to fresh potholes. “The rain has eased. So, road repairs should have been completed by now. But that hasn’t happened as yet. Besides, damaged drainage chambers and displaced manhole covers are now posing a serious threat to two-wheeler riders. PMC should deploy dedicated repair teams in every ward instead of relying on scattered efforts,” he said.The civic body has received more than 300 road repair complaints so far, but daily commuters insisted that the actual picture on the ground was far worse. Elected representatives from the city’s fringe areas echoed those concerns, highlighting the poor condition of roads and service lanes along the Katraj-Dehu Road Bypass, where large potholes have emerged following the rain. “We will raise the issue in the upcoming PMC general body meeting. Residents are approaching us in large numbers demanding immediate repairs,” Bavdhan corporator Dilip Wede Patil said.The growing public anger has also reached the PMC’s corridors. During a standing committee meeting last week, chairperson Shrinath Bhimale directed the administration to initiate action against officials who fail to respond to road repair complaints. Despite the warning, sources said no action had been taken against either civic officials or road contractors so far.Adding to commuters’ woes, rail underpasses in Khadki continue to witness waterlogging after every spell of rain, turning key routes into bottlenecks. Long-pending proposals to widen these underpasses remain stuck on paper, with no immediate solution in sight.
