Mumbai, May 5: Mumbaikar's can expect some relief from potholes this monsoon, as the civic body is planning to use high-quality potholes filling mix. The Asphalt plant in Worli of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation(BMC) will produce the mixture that can withstand heavy showers. To recall, last year the civic body procured such quality mixture from Israel and Austria, and after it yielded good results, it has now decided to produce same in their asphalt plant. According to officials, the production will be cost efficient as the BMC spent about Rs 70 lakh on the purchase of 38 tonnes of imported mix earlier.

At its Worli plant, there are two machines. One machine set up in 1992, can churn out mixture at 40 tonnes per hour, the second one, bought in 2010, can churn out 120 tonnes per hour. Given that they need 11,000 tonnes in the monsoon alone, the BMC decided to develop the cold mix at its Worli plant by making the necessary changes to its plant there. The officials added the plant will be ready in a month's time, and after that by mid-June on experiment basis, 2500 metric tonnes of the mixture will be churned out and put to the test.

To produce the cold mix, the BMC has decided to buy ingredients from a German firm. Therefore, instead of Rs. 170/kg on the ready-made, the civic body would pay just Rs. 28/kg on the ingredients.

While one of the well known Mumbai based activist named James John, coordinator of a non-governmental organisation AGNI said." bitumen loses its effectiveness when it interacts with water, so before applying the mixture, water should be evaporated, which is almost never done," according to news reports.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 05, 2018 11:51 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).