MUMBAI: Saturday afternoon’s incident of a concrete slab collapsing from the elevated Metro -4 site in Mulund has angered Mumbaikars, with most of them raising questions over safety protocols followed by Mumbai Metropolitan region Development Authority (MMRDA) and its contractors who deploy workers at various metro sites in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).
While citizens have underscored the laxity of contractors and general consultants “who are paid crores of public money to monitor the works”, urban planners, infrastructure and transport experts have questioned the protocols being followed by them.
MMRDA is currently carrying out works on eight different metro corridors that are part of its overall 337-kilometer network. An activist and an eyewitness of the incident alleged that “labourers working on the Metro-4 site here cut the concrete slab wall instead of welding it”.
AV Shenoy, member, Mumbai Mobility Forum said: “Going for lowest of all quotations – the L1 system (or the lowest bidder) — makes contractors use substandard material to cut costs. It seems there is no active supervision by MMRDA engineers to ensure quality, and the total dependence is on contractors and external consultants to maintain quality.”
Architect and transport analyst Jagdeep Desai, who is the chairperson of Forum for Improving Quality of Life in Mumbai, pinned the blame on substandard quality control of the construction on the whole, as well as the dereliction of duty by contractors. Calling attention to how labourers in construction sites are made to work, he said, “The labourers appear untrained, unsupervised and not in full protective work clothes, footwear, high visibility jackets, safety net, harness, helmets, gloves and eyewear. The supervisors of the work sites don’t care how drivers of construction vehicles, cranes, piling machines, excavators, tankers, cement mixers, trailers, drive and park in the middle of traffic, or in the extreme end outside the lanes, blocking smooth flow of traffic. Barricades are dirty and not visible in the nights and during heavy rain.”
Referring to the present incident in Mulund, Desai said, “An independent structural audit should be done of all the structural elements at metro sites, considering that most incomplete columns, viaduct, station slabs, etc are at least five or more years old.”
An MMRDA official, who did not wish to be named, said that it is the responsibility of the “general consultant is to ensure that the ongoing works are undertaken with adequate safety measures and protocols, and to keep a check on the day-to-day activities of the consultant carrying out the work, which is why they are paid crores of public money”.