Ulhasnagar civic body comes up with SOP for slab collapse incidents

A day after the Manas Tower slab collapse incident in which four persons were killed, the Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation has come up with a Standard Operating Procedure to deal with the collapse incidents in the city

A day after the Manas Tower slab collapse incident in which four persons were killed, the Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation (UMC) has come up with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to deal with the collapse incidents in the city.

Residents light candles in front of the photos of the deceased on Friday following the slab collapse incident on Thursday that killed four persons. (PRAMOD TAMBE/HT PHOTO)

UMC civic chief Aziz Shaikh, who held a meeting with all the concerned officials, said the civic body would have a technical advisory committee that will look after the issues pertaining to the buildings that need structural audit.

“Our technical advisory committee will guide the residents on structural audits of buildings. There are several doubts related to the audit and its charges. Our committee comprising engineers, town planning officers, fire officials and additional commissioner will guide them,” said Shaikh.

On Friday, the civic body started a survey on each building within its limits and see if they appear to be dangerous from outside.

“Our ward officers are checking if there are cracks. They look dilapidated or tilted. The survey will continue for a week across the city and the residents will be accordingly asked to do the audit of their buildings immediately,” said Shaikh.

In order to ensure that once the audit is done and the residents implement the repairs, the civic body will ask the auditors to do a follow up.

UMC also assured that there will be no delay in giving permission for repairs. If any residents are not conducting the audit of the building, UMC will take up the audit and later recover the expenses from the property taxes of those residents.

Throughout the year, the UMC could only raze 11 buildings that were extremely dangerous while 28 were razed by the residents themselves. The civic body also carried out the audit of 111 buildings and suggested changes as per the audit report.

The State Government, in January 2006, brought out an ordinance to regularise 855 illegal structures in this Sindhi-dominated Eastern suburb. Only 164 structures could be regularised in four years. There are 600 buildings that cannot be regularised because they do not follow the norms for building’s height, parking space, open space and involve a change of user or consumed extra FSI. While over 500 structures have an FSI of over 4, around 140 structures are standing on public land reserved for roads, nullahs or playgrounds.

Last month, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde gave a nod for regularisation of buildings in Ulhasnagar.

“A committee was formed last year in July by the State Government. We have no idea what the committee has done so far and what report they have given. The CM has given a nod for regularisation but there is no clue about its status,” said Shashikant Dayma, social activist from Ulhasnagar.