Monsoon: BMC control room to be decentralised soon
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), keeping in mind the need of speedy disaster management during the monsoons, is all set to de-centralise its control room and make one in each of the 22 wards in the city. However, the catch is that this work would not be completed soon and as such will not be of any use to the city this monsoon.
“The main idea behind this initiative is to ensure that there is decentralised work to deal with any kind of disasters. With each ward having its own control room, even at the local level there can be better disaster management,” said joint municipal commissioner (disaster management), S S Shinde.
Each of the wards will have a control room with all the facilities like the one at the BMC headquarters. “Each control room will have a communication system, furniture and tools as is found in the main control room. This will ensure better interaction among all the wards when it comes to disaster management,” said Shinde.
The civic body will be shelling out a total of Rs 27 crores on this. Of this, Rs 9.29 crores will be spent on the city, Rs 10.83 crores on the eastern suburbs and Rs 763 crores on the western suburbs. “Though we have tabled the proposal, it will take another three months for the work to start on this. This is because we have to follow a set of protocol rules while dealing with any such large scale project,” said Shinde. He also admitted that this is the reason why the initiative will not be beneficial for the city this monsoons.
“Even though it won’t help this monsoon, we are sure the future monsoons will be relatively safer,” said Shinde. He added that earlier, the BMC control room was the only place to address monsoon grievances and was operational only at that time. “But the control rooms for individual wards are being set up to answer calls 24 round the clock, seven days a week and 365 days a year,” said Shinde.
The proposal would also see painting, electric fittings and furniture being provided to each control room at roughly Rs 1 crore per ward.