Thane building collapse opened up the Pandora’s box and give rise to the way we give importance to security in our housing societies in the Metro. Whether, it is pagri system or plain rented or owner occupied loss of life should be avoided. Municipal Corporations should be vested with enough powers by the courts so that such buildings are either repaired by levying repair charges on the tenant and or on the owner or completely demolished. A monthly cess or compulsory insurance on such old buildings above 30 years vintage will go a long way in mitigating such recurring human tragedies. The Municipal Corporations while issuing notices to the residents of structurally gone weak buildings to evacuate, should also make alternate temporary shelters to enable them to shift there immediately, as without having any alternate arrangements, where can they think of shifting their families with bag and baggage. In this case, those who had such an arrangement, vacated, left and saved their lives. But those who did not have said sort of arrangement to shift and stay, had to remain compulsorily in the said dilapidated building and ultimately pay price with similar tragedies.
The Municipal Corporations and the Government of Maharashtra must think and act to save lives of poor people dying on this count and in view of the fact there are thousands of such buildings in Mumbai and suburbs remain insecure for occupation. However, the state of the buildings which are on the verge of falling down due to their life span has already expired, and still the people live there taking risk of their own life. Flat owners should strictly adhere to the rules and the warnings should be issued to the society and use their presence of mind to get out of their flats in time to make sure that they do not fall prey to the building crashes frequently happening to old construction.
Time-bound redevelopment of such dilapidated buildings is a must, otherwise, we will see more lives being lost in Mumbai and suburbs. It is indeed a very sad and shocking incident. Obviously, those who died continued to stay in a dilapidated building despite municipal warning, only because they had no other option. Where is affordable housing these days? My heart goes out to the families of the victims. The building should have been demolished long ago. I hope the families will get compensation.
Jayanthy Subramaniam
