Car workshops make hay as rains continue

It is now the turn of Mumbai's auto workshops to be flooded with water-damaged vehicles. Almost all the workshops are full and some are even turning away customers.

Expecting that this will continue for another week, service centres around the city are busy estimating the total damage caused to vehicles and the spare parts needed for repair.

"We don't have space in our workshop. Somehow we have been able to get emergency land nearby to park the damaged cars. We were getting 15 cars a day on an average but now more than 80 cars are already there and another 40 are on the way to our centre," said Praveen Yadav of JP Auto World, the Tata Motors authorised centre in Borivali East.

"We can't start the repairing work unless the insurance surveyors and inspectors clear up all the legalities; though some of the customers are pressing us to start work on their vehicles but we can't, as we are bound by insurance rules," added Yadav.

In the absence of an enough towing vans, owners themselves could be seen pushing their cars to the workshops.

"Within an hour we had gone into the water at Saki Naka. Having no other option but to leave my vehicle there on the road for two days, I went back to my house," said Radhakishan owner of a Tata Indigo, and resident of Borivali.

The cost of repairs hovers around Rs 10,000 to Rs 40,000 in most cases but in serious cases, it could even shoot upto Rs 1 lakh.

"It depends on how much the car was submerged," said Yadav. "People waited in their vehicle for the water to go down but unexpectedly the water kept on rising and did unprecedented damage," he said.

"We are not used to such conditions, we never knew that the extent of the damage will go to such levels. Once the vehicles started floating the body of the car was more vulnerable which has raised the repairing costs," said Yadav.

"Number of complaints are around 300 on a daily basis," said an official spokesperson of Fiat India. On the other hand the Maruti dealers are receiving 500 to 1000 complaints. In some cases the customers may have to wait for spare parts which are not available for 5 to 7 days, said the dealers.

The engineers at the service centres suspect that it will be hard to clear off the backlog of repairs soon. They said that it would take at least a month.

Auto makers have been informed about the damaged spare parts. In most cases catalytic converters, electronic control module (ECM), air filter, oil filter and fuel filter are the worst affected. In some seriously damaged cars even silencers, AC units and car batteries have not been spared by the floods.