BENGALURU: Following the murder of a young woman at a paying guest (PG) accommodation in Koramangala a few days ago, the BBMP is all set to introduce guidelines on operating PG centres. Any failure to adhere to the set norms would amount to cancellation of the PGs’ trade licences, it warned. The guidelines will be issues in a couple of days.
According to Special Commissioner (Health), BBMP, Suralkar Vikas Kishore, one of the guidelines would be a cap on the number of inmates and their safety. While the ward officials are speaking about the laws and guidelines, the residents and activists waging a war against illegal PG accommodations say that at the ward level in Whitefield, no permission is given since such buildings are coming up in residential areas, which is against the rules.
“It is a paradigm of illegality. The owners deviate from the building plan or put such a building without any plan or approvals. This leads to the collapse of infrastructure, and administration and destroys the livability,” an activist said.
City Police Commissioner B Dayananda also said the responsibility to regulate PG accommodation rests with the municipality and the police will only look into law and order issues at such locations.
The whole exercise of BBMP coming up with new guidelines to run and operate PG accommodations is against the backdrop of the murder of a girl recently. On August 31, 2016, a girl was raped at knife-point at a PG centre in Parappana Agrahara. “The issue of safety, hygiene, etc matters and all these need to be checked by officials. If such accommodations fails to meet the BBMP’s expectations, their building licence will be cancelled and the building will be sealed,” said an official.