MC fails to check unsafe buildings in city

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, June 27

Even as the monsoon season is around the corner and fatalities due to falling of unsafe buildings are reported every year, the Jalandhar Municipal Corporation has failed to get any updated list of such dilapidated buildings for the past over eight years.

A last survey that the Town Planning Department here had done was in 2009 when 12 such unsafe buildings had been marked. Ever since, no notices for repair/renovation and no demolition action from the authorities have followed.

The MC had then marked 12 dangerous buildings in the city of which five were stated to be lying in a ramshackle condition and could reportedly fall any moment. Having sent notices then, MC officials have not checked or followed up for the status of such buildings to see whether these have been repaired, demolished or lie in a worse condition.

Most of the buildings reported to the MC fall in the area near Ram Gali, Charanjitpura, Charat Singh Bazaar and Chowk Malka. On asking the officials whether how many buildings after sending notices have been demolished or repaired, the officials miserably failed to provide any answer. Most councillors claim that the number of unsafe buildings is far more and the officials have failed to wake up from their slumber despite two-three incidents happening every year.

Corporation Engineer, Rahul Dhawan, said, “No survey has been conducted by the administration so far. We have the old data with us but no new additions of such buildings have been made”. Also on asking if there is any check by the administration, XEN Dhawan failed to provide any authentic information or data for the same. The same response came repeatedly from two other corporation engineers Rajneesh Dogra and CL Maan.

Kulwinder Singh, Superintending Engineer, MC said, “The last survey was conducted eight years ago to check if any dangerous building collapsed in the residential or commercial area. Around 12 such buildings were marked to which the occupants of these buildings were served notices to either get their dilapidated structure properly repaired or vacate these buildings to move to some safe place within 10 days. Even those who could not fulfil these conditions on their own were told to approach the district administration so that an alternate arrangement of their stay could be made on a temporary basis. No new data or records of the building have been marked since the past many years. We have not been informed that an old building has fallen, we presume that these buildings should have been repaired”, he claimed.

Though the Municipal Corporation has got the physical property mapping done as per the Geographical Information System (GIS) under the Smart City project, it has failed to get the inspection of the areas done to mark the unsafe buildings lying in the city alongside.

Past incidents

A 45-year-old man Roshan Lal died last year as the roof of his house collapsed at Basti Danishmandan while he was asleep. His wife Suman and two teenage daughters Simran and Shilpa too were lying asleep and got buried under the debris.

Two brothers Simar and Gurpreet, who had gone to purchase bikes from a showroom, got badly hurt when an unsafe building in Ali Pulli Mohalla atop the showroom fell on them in the previous year. It had been raining and the first floor of the unused, unsafe building came down all of a sudden which led to a panic in the area on the old GT Road near Jyoti Chowk.

Cause of concern

With monsoon likely to begin within a week, the issue of risk owing to presence of unsafe buildings in congested areas of the city perhaps does not fall in the priority list of the Municipal Corporation authorities. In fact, the MC has not even bothered to get any survey conducted of unsafe buildings in the past eight years.