‘Is this what clean looks like?’

Civic activists allege that the cityrsquos nullahs are as unclean as they have been in the past years despite the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC claim of having carried out 19 per cent more desilting as compared to previous yearsThe civic body had started a WhatsApp chatbot on June 1 to address complaints regarding clogged nullahs on directions from Chief Minister Eknath Shinde However activists say complaints were being disposed of by the BMC which said the photos provided are of floating material They also alleged that the civic body doesnrsquot provide any proof of the desilting work carried out at a particular spot after complaints are madeKrishna Nagar nullah near Marol Municipal MarketldquoI had uploaded a photo of an unclean nullah at Juhu Gully on WhatsApp on June 1 The chatbot asked for an image to be uploaded and for the location registering a complaint on the same day However till Monday June 12 the issue remained unresolved The chatbot showed that the complaint number was reassigned on June 12rdquo activist Zoru Bhathena saidSince the chatbot was pressed into service the BMC has received more than 400 complaints but officials claimed that less than half of these are related to major nullahs and none of them are regarding related to improper desilting work Instead they are about garbage and floating material in the nullah ldquoHow do we know that there is no silt beneath the floating material Besides we did not see any desilting going on prior to our complaintrdquo Bhathena saidAccording to activist Anil Galgali the situation is the same as it has been over the past few years ldquoI havenrsquot registered a complaint on WhatsApp but on Twitter a few days back The gutter at Khairani Road in Kurla was full of garbage The L Ward office removed it but couldnrsquot provide any proof that desilting had been carried out in the area before or that it was only floating materialrdquo he said adding that the BMC should install a board at the location with an image and information on how and when they cleaned the nullah ldquoIt will not cost much and give transparencyrdquoA gutter near Khairani Road KurlaActivist Godfrey Pimenta said that desilting work hasnrsquot been carried out on several stretches of the Mithi River ldquoThe BMC has only carried out desilting at locations where people can see the work being done but ignored the slum pockets How can the water flow if the river is choked along stretches in the middle Whenever I complain the BMC acts immediately But why wait for a complaintrdquoCongress leader Sanjay Nirupam alleged that several nullahs are still not cleaned up After visiting nullahs on Saturday he has written a letter to the chief minister in this regard The Storm Water Drains SWD department of the BMC claims to have removed 1170 lakh tonnes of silt from nullahs and rivers across the city which is 19 per cent more than the targeted quantity Earlier the civic body would remove around 980 lakh tonnes of garbagewastesilt by the May 31 deadlineThe WhatsApp service started on June 1 received 278 complaints within a week According to the SWD only 102 complaints were related to major nullahs which come under the department Of these 50 per cent of the complaints were from the eastern suburbs ldquoOf the 102 complaints 89 were closed after resolving the issue whereas work on 13 complaints was underway as on June 7rdquo said a civic official The BMC didnrsquot provide updated data on the status of the complaints278No of complaints received by WhatsApp chatbot in the first week