Additional Municipal Commissioner Ashwini Joshi, in an interview with mid-day, shed light on how Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) staff toiled around the clock as well as the intricate planning that was carried out to ensure the unprecedented Maratha protest in South Mumbai did not drastically throw life out of gear for ordinary Mumbaikars.
Excerpts:
Citizens have commended the BMC for managing the strain on infrastructure. How did the civic administration cope?
The administration was busy with preparations for the Ganesh festival, when a lot of coordination is needed between various BMC departments, such as solid waste management and transport. The BMC had to pull staff from festival duty and reassign them here. We reassigned staff from areas that see relatively low festival footfall. Around 50 to 100 people were reassigned. Tremendous interdepartmental coordination had to be managed to ensure we met the demands of the situation.
What special preparations were required?
Our entire staff is working around the clock, in three shifts. There are over 1200 karmacharis from the solid waste management department. A lot of staff were required in the A ward, which has jurisdiction over the Azad Maidan area. Our preparations include setting up temporary toilets, ensuring they are always clean and available for use. Our staff has been cleaning them even overnight. Water tankers have been made available to ensure hygienic drinking water is supplied to those on the streets. We fixed area-wise responsibility on loaders, who are each in charge of ensuring the facilities in their respective care, such as toilets, drinking water, fumigation, transport and disposal of waste, are up-to-date.
Please elaborate on the interdepartmental coordination you mentioned
We are looking at departments that are working overtime — from the fire department, which set up high masts at beaches in Mumbai, to solid waste management, which made sure clean toilets were available, and streets were swept on time. The hydraulic engineering department has been taking care of drinking water requirements. The PR department has been working overtime to ensure transparent, last-mile, and authentic dissemination of information to all citizens. We have had support from the disaster management, health and transport departments. Officers of the rank of assistant commissioner are in charge of particular vertices for coordination between departments.
Can you quantify the cost incurred for these special arrangements?
We do not think like that in such a situation. The staff working around the clock is BMC’s staff. We are working for Mumbai.
