CHANDIGARH: Around 65 high-rise buildings in Gurugram have structural anomalies and are awaiting auditing by competent authorities, according to the Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs).
In a letter to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal, the RWAs have requested that the builders be made accountable for the safety of the buildings. Also, the authorities should issue Occupation Certificates (OCs) only when safety of the structure is guaranteed, they added.
As Gurugram lies in seismic zone-4 and the buildings are not earthquake resistant, the occupants get terrified in the face of a quake.
Adding to the problems are issues like exposed iron bars, sagging balconies, cracks, damp basements. The administration has started a structural audit of 37 societies. A majority of these have been visually audited.
Talking with this reporter over phone, Praveen Malik, President of United Association of New Gurugram, said, “Multiple letters have been written to the authorities regarding this. As there are around 67 societies in the satellite city having high-rise buildings which have reported structural faults, structural audits of 32 societies have been conducted by four agencies engaged by the district administration. But the audit was just visual inspection and nothing else so how can one find structural faults without destructive test and non- destructive test which are the only two modes to check the strength and faults in the structure and these tests have not been done.“
“There are no parameters in place for a structural audit. Also, the reports of these agencies which have done structural audits should be made public. We demand that competition certificates be made mandatory for societies and clauses of structural audit should be incorporated in that. Only a few societies in Gurugram have competition certificates. There is no accountability for safety of residents as builders manage to get occupation certificates (OCs) even with the poorest quality of work,’’ he said.
He added that otherwise incidents like Chintels Paradiso at Sector 109 collapsed partially as six of its 9 towers were declared ‘unsafe’ will keep on happening.