The Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC) has issued notices to residents or owners of dangerous buildings now and then, it has done nothing to evacuate inhabitants.
Meanwhile, the list of those buildings has kept growing, with the GMC identifying 122 of them this year, including multi-storey towers and government buildings.
In 2018, the GMC identified 26 dangerous buildings unfit to be inhabited, and this number went up to 102 in 2020. The number is higher than ever this year. “The union ministry of housing and urban affairs from time to time seeks details of the dangerous buildings in the city for which the corporation conducts a survey. In this year’s survey, we found 122 dangerous buildings in the city, which are unfit for human inhabitation,” said an official from GMC.
Out of a total 122 such buildings, 78 are in a dilapidated state. “These include 15 colonies under Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) and electric substations, but these are mostly private buildings, while some are highrise buildings,” added the official.
When asked about action initiated by the GMC, the official said that it sent notices for immediate evacuation to residents and owners. “But all the GMC can do is issue notices or bring it to the notice of the higher-ups. Every time we insist on evacuation, we are met with opposition from the residents. So, the list of such buildings keeps growing every year,” said the official.
There are GMC buildings too, which are a part of the list of dangerous buildings. In July 2020, a GMC employee sustained injuries when a chunk of a ceiling gave way and fell on him at the corporation zonal office in the Vijay Nagar zone.
Amit Kumar, a resident of Mandakini Towers in Vaishali Sector 4, said, “Ours is a nine-storey building, which since 2018 has been constantly among the city’s most dangerous buildings. As of now, 240 people live here.”
“The GDA is to blame for the pathetic condition of Mandakini Towers since it developed the colony but when it came to maintenance, it passed the buck to the RWA,” he said.
