The municipal corporation hasn't begun repairing decrepit buildings despite having time and funds

The repair and redevelopment work of 52 dilapidated civic-owned buildings in the city that was supposed to begin in October and for which the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has allocated Rs 25 crore has not yet begun.


The BMC notice issued to Hemdil Apartment in Santacruz (West),
certifying it as a dilapidated building. pic/ file photo

In fact, the BMC has not even managed to demolish the buildings and has used only three per cent of the Rs 1 crore allocated for demolition. "Only Rs 3 lakh has been spent from the demolition budget allocated for the 52 buildings in the city that are owned by the municipal authority," an official from the BMC's accounts department told this reporter. "Last year the allocated budget was not even touched for the repair work," he added.

Some of these buildings in question require tiling work; some have leakages and some need to be plastered.

"The tenders have yet not been issued and the authorities will come out with another list of dilapidated structures before next year's monsoon. The possibility of these buildings collapsing becomes a major concern during the monsoons and after the monsoons everything is forgotten," admitted another official from the city engineering department.

In the first half of year 2011,u00a0 the BMC carried out a survey and declared 244 city buildings as dilapidated, of which 52 were BMC buildings. Out of these, 21 are located in the E ward (Byculla and Mazgaon) and 10 are in the F south ward (Parel and Sewree).

When contacted, J Padgaonkar, BMC city engineer, said, "It's been only a few days since that I have taken charge of the post. So I do not know much about this."

According to a senior official from the city engineering department, the tenders to repair and reconstruct these buildings are supposed to be issued by the Planning & Development (P&D) department and the department hasn't done so.

On the other hand, D V Kamat, Chief Engineer (P&D) said he doesn't know if the tenders have been issued or not as it comes under the city engineering department.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Aseem Gupta was not available for comment.