The recent incident of building collapse in Kalyan has once again highlighted the plight of residents living in dangerous buildings across Kalyan and Dombivli.
The residents in the twin cities have highlighted the need for a proper policy by Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) with respect to dangerous buildings in the city.
As per the KDMC records, 1,872 residents live in unsafe buildings across Kalyan-Dombivli.
A 53-year-old man was killed while his 48-year-old wife suffered injuries in Rambaug area of Kalyan after their ground-plus-two-storeyed building collapsed on Wednesday.
In yet another instance, the plaster of the third floor of the ground-plus-three-storeyed Pitru Krupa building in Navapada area of Dombivli (W) fell on June 29, leading to panic among the residents of the building. A total of 26 families still live in this building with fear.
This building was just a one-storey structure till 2004. Later, three more floors were added to it in 2004 by the owners. Residents live on a rental basis in this building. Two years back, the residents also carried out a structural audit of the building by spending ₹14,000.
“The audit report suggested the building is repairable. However, when we told the same to the builder, there was no response. We have not received any notice from the civic body about the status of the building. We did an audit for our safety as portions of the building fell that time. However, there is no support from the owners or KDMC to conduct repairs on the building. We are risking our lives by residing here,” said Santosh Virkute, 48, an auto rickshaw driver who has been living in the building since 2004.
He claimed that there should be a policy or standard process followed for such buildings.
The building is owned by five brothers. Ramchandra Mhatre, one of the owners, said, “I am not much aware of the audit carried out by the residents that they claim to have done. I will hold a meeting with them and if required will do an audit by myself and decide what step needs to be taken as per the report.”
Pramod Patil, ward officer, said, “If the building is unsafe, we would be serving notice to the residents to vacate it.”
In another case, Akshay Pawar, 28, a resident of Asmita Apartment in Katemanivali, Kalyan (E), has decided to complain to the KDMC regarding non-cooperation from the committee members in carrying out the structural audit for the 30 years old building.
“It is high time we got the structural audit done for the building and we residents have been demanding the same with the committee members. However, they have completely neglected it. I have decided to approach the civic body now as the internal conflict might take several lives tomorrow. The building had earlier reported incidents of plaster collapse and cracks earlier.”
The building has 30 rooms and is fully occupied, claimed Pawar.
A representative of the committee said, “We will do the audit soon. Once the meeting of the committee and residents is done, a decision will be taken.”
The civic body claimed to have demolished a maximum number of dangerous buildings in the last year. A total of 138 structures out of the 225 listed by the civic body as dangerous were demolished.
“Even if the civic body claims that it has demolished a lot of the dangerous buildings, there are many more such buildings that are not listed as dangerous and residents live in them. There is no track on whether a 30-year-old building has done its structural audit or not. Internal conflicts of these buildings are not addressed, which is why there is shoddy work and when there is a building collapse, everyone raises their hands. The civic body should have a policy to address the issue of dangerous buildings,” said Sreeniwas Ghanekar, founder of Alert Citizen Forum, which had written to the civic body several times on this matter.
Inquiry into building collapse incident
Meanwhile, the KDMC has formed a committee under the leadership of the additional commissioner to set up an inquiry in the Koshe Building collapse that killed one and injured another on Wednesday.
“The committee will check what went wrong and whether the concerned civic officer had taken all the necessary steps with regard to the dangerous building. The report from the committee will be checked and a decision will be taken,” said Sunil Pawar, additional commissioner, KDMC.
