Why three years without municipal elections has been punishment for Mumbai
A broken lane in a slum settlement in Mumbai’s Kurla has kept residents on tenterhooks.
“Sometimes, sewage water leaks out of the damaged manhole covers,” said Rizwan Shaikh. “That attracts rats and we fear they will bite our children.”
Over the last few months, women from the Bharti Nagar slum have visited the local ward office several times to complain. But the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is yet to undertake repair work in the lane.
Not far from Kurla, on April 24, Draupadi Gholak booked a taxi to take her paralysed husband to the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion.
He had been advised by his doctor to get an MRI scan. Gholak says the MRI machine was unavailable. “Who do we go to to complain about this?” she asked.
In the west of Mumbai, the cardiac catheterisation laboratory at the municipality’s Dr RN Cooper hospital, has been shut for some weeks.
Former municipal corporator Rajul Patel contacted the municipal corporation several times, asking them to restart the services. When nothing was done, she wrote a letter to the Member of Parliament of Mumbai North West, Ravindra Waikar, seeking his intervention.
From basic civic amenities to health facilities, Mumbai residents have been struggling to get the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to address their problems, ever...
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