Need to amend policy to monitor buildings stressed
CHENNAI: Deaths due to collapse of dilapidated buildings and poorly constructed walls have not only made headlines in Tamil Nadu, but the recent deaths of school children in Tirunelveli and the death of head constable in Madurai had exposed the lack of stringent policy and monitoring of such structures by the state administration.
The ground situation is such that the ruling party MLA I Paranthaman, who visited an anganwadi centre in his Egmore constituency on Tuesday, was baffled to see an exposed ceiling with iron rods protruding.
Former chief minister and AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam, who expressed condolences for the killed head constable in a century-old building collapse in Madurai on Thursday urged the state to ensure that there was no recurrence of such tragedies.
“While the plan approval is issued by local administration department there is no monitoring system in place to check the safety of private and government buildings. During the time of construction of government buildings there should be a third party to monitor the quality as there is always a nexus between politicians, officers and the contractors,” admitted a senior government official wishing not to be named.
At present, the tender norms have been amended making third party verification mandatory. But, again sometimes the nexus even corrupts the third party. There is a need to reexamine the policies of the local administration and the state housing departments, the official noted. “We react only when there is a casualty due to building collapse and most of the times the demolition notice issued by the municipal corporations is not taken seriously by the private building owners and there is no concept of issuing demolition notice to government buildings,” opined A Swaminathan, former chief engineer of Chennai Corporation. He also demanded a mandatory building census by civic authorities based on the property tax database.
Most of the civil constructors are in a way associated with the politicians making it difficult even for genuine officials to intervene or stop a substandard project said, Jeyaraman Venkatesan, convenor, Arpoor Iyakkam, an anti-corruption body said.
In my view, there should be a guarantee period of 50 years for any government building constructed by the contractors, he added.