The Mumbai Commissioner of Police (CP) Sanjay Pandey (IPS) held a meeting on Wednesday with realty developers regarding various complaints and senior citizens' concerns associated with construction activity causing noise and dust pollution. The meeting also took into account the long working hours on site and deployment of private traffic wardens, who are responsible for traffic flow and erect temporary obstructions on the roads to aid the process.
The Mumbai Police issued a list of 'do's and don'ts' to be followed by the developers at construction site, which includes maintaining noise levels at sites are within the approved 65 decibels limit. It is also mandatory for all developers to install a signboard on sites mentioning the permissible working hours and the acceptable decibel levels.
The developers, however, stated that it is just not construction activities but various others factors that are adding to the noise pollution. Dr Niranjan Hiranandani, MD, Hiranandani Group said, “Noise pollution is one of the alarming issues in metro cities and there are many other factors that lead to rising decibel levels other than construction activities which also need to be taken into account. The industry concurs with the concerns and is in alignment with the action of Mumbai CP to curb the decibel levels. We hope a holistic view on developers coping to make up for lost time due to inevitable setbacks is also considered."
Similarly, Hitesh Thakkar – vice-president of NAREDCO West and partner of Prem Group – said a lot of advanced technology has come into construction, following which there is hardly any noise on site. “There are tower cranes to take material on higher floors, for concreting work we have foamwork and ready mix cement concrete can be loaded directly on floors. Unlike previous conventional methods, now constructing a building has become more modernised.
There is absolutely no noise," he said, adding that builders carrying out any project are restricted to their own private premises and are not involved at public places like the infrastructure projects.
Besides, there is an existing restriction that no big vehicles can ply during the day time and construction activity cannot be done post 10.00 pm. So it is also necessary to bring relaxation in this norm so that the material can be loaded on-site in a permissible time limit further expediting the project timeline andmaintaining financial viability," he said.
Boman Irani (president CREDAI-MCHI) and Sandeep Runwal (president NAREDCO), among other leading developers, were present for the meeting with the Mumbai Police Commissioner. After the meeting, a brief note was shared with all developers seeking their support to the police.
