HYDERABAD: The Indian National Trust for Art, Culture and Heritage (INTACH) has sought permission from the State government to conduct a structural survey of the closed heritage building of Osmania General Hospital and other blocks on the campus. Speaking to the media on Friday, Anuradha Reddy, Convener of INTACH Hyderabad, said that while adaptive reuse of the heritage building as a museum or a library was suggested earlier, there was an urgent need to study the condition of the newer RCC buildings for restoration.
The INTACH had conducted a structural stability and safety study in 2015 and 2019. Anuradha Reddy said continuous monitoring of the structures using non-destruct ive testing (NDT) methods and the use of restoration methods could not only reduce the rate of deterioration, but could also increase the lifespan of structures. Referring to the earlier reports, Anuradha Reddy stressed that the water-logging condition during last year’s rains was a culmination of wrongful diversion of flood waters and blockage of old drainage system und e r the heritage building.
She felt structural issues with the newer blocks could be addressed through column jacketing, shotcreting and anticorrosive coatingss among other methods. Dr SP Anchuri, structural consultant, opined that in the absence of continuous monitoring by an established task force, it wouldn’t be possible to protect the structures, whether old or new.