Mumbai : On Tuesday, the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) will observe a token one-day strike as a mark of respect and solidarity to MCHI Thane President Suraj Parmar who allegedly committed suicide last week. CREDAI has decided to close all its construction and administrative operations for a day.
On October 7, Parmar — who was the President of Thane chapter of Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (CREDAI-MCHI) — shot himself as he was allegedly fed up of the harassment from various governmental departments and their repeated demands for bribes, CREDAI said in a statement.
“The fight against a corrupt and inefficient government system has led to the loss of our fellow developer. As a mark of respect and solidarity, all our member developers will protest with closure of offices, sites office, registration and all construction work tomorrow,” the statement said.
According to CREDAI, developers need around 54-60 approvals and permissions before starting a real estate project. Each approval necessitates dealing with a number of government authorities and the process takes several years.
“The entire process takes around two to three years resulting in the projects suffering cost overrun and avoidable delays to the consuming public. CREDAI has consistently sought rationalisation of approval processes and a single-window system and the demand has been approved in principle by a number of committees. However, action is yet to be seen,” it said.
CREDAI and its members also plan to appeal to the state government to improve the trust deficit between them and enable a spirit of partnership to ensure that that such incidents never recur and the ‘ease of doing business’ can become a reality, it added.
