To avoid any untoward incident, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) plans to carry out a structural audit of buildings which are more than 30-year-old. The NMMC structural engineers registered with the civic body will check the buildings. The civic body wants the structural audit reports to be submitted to the civic Town Planning department by December 31.
The survey of the dangerous building for the year 2020-21 in NMMC revealed a total of 457 buildings in the city are dangerous and require immediate repairs. These buildings have already asked to take necessary construction measures as per their conditions. Some of them are in dilapidated conditions and need to be vacated immediately.
In the 2019 survey, 443 buildings were found dangerous and around 55 of them were extremely dangerous to live in. Most of them are CIDCO constructed buildings. The civic body has also asked other buildings which are more than 30 years old and are being used by people to undergo structural audit as per the Section 265 (a) of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act. The date of the building will be considered when the occupation certificate (fully or partially) was issued.
The civic body will impose Rs 25,000 penalty for not carrying out the structural audit and submitting the report in time. The penalty will be collected at the time of the collection of annual property tax. The responsibility of carrying out the structural audit lies with owners or occupants. Meanwhile, the civic body has made available the list of engineers at its official website for carrying out the structural audit.
Civic chief Abhijit Bangar has warned that living in a building declared as dangerous is unsafe and appealed to vacate those buildings. He also clarified that in case of a mishap, the entire responsibility of the mishap lies with the occupants and owners. However, people continue to live in dangerous buildings despite the civic body’s warning. On several occasions, the civic body had warned off to disconnect water and electricity connection.
