176 Vadodara families spent night in the open in fear of repeat of Jamnagar tragedy
Senior VMC officials said the Municipal Commissioner had also directed officials to conduct a safety audit of the building Friday, following complaints and serve the necessary eviction notice to the occupants to avert any tragedy.
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A resident points to the slab fell off at her house in a colony in Jeevan Nagar in Vadodara. (Express Photo by Bhupendra Rana)
Close to 176 families residing in 11 four-storey buildings at Jeevan Nagar — a housing colony constructed by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) under the Basic Services to Urban Poor (BSUP) scheme — at the Waghodia Road area vacated their “dilapidated” homes after hearing the news of a building collapse in Jamnagar’s Sadhana colony that killed four Friday.
The fear and panic of the residents is palpable with the ceilings of most flats seeing debonding plaster and exposed reinforcement rods. The residents ran out of the building Friday night, staying in the open as fear gripped the colony. However, a heavy downpour early on Saturday morning forced them to return to their homes, some of which are now unfit for living. The buildings, which have been occupied since 2010 are in a visible run down condition, with residents stating that they have been petitioning the VMC to carry out repair works for over two years.
“We have petitioned VMC and the district collector, too… There was an assistant commissioner, who visited the colony to inspect but he only told us that we will have to evict the homes. What about the repair? We have been telling them for several years, especially since 2021 to carry out the work and charge us the money if they want,” said Suresh Kahar, president of the housing colony.
A resident of the colony, Shobha Kahar, 55, said her daughter and granddaughter had a miraculous escape Friday when the slab plaster of her fourth-floor apartment collapsed leaving the residents in a state of panic, especially after the news of the Jamnagar tragedy. “We have been living in constant fear since the last three years at least… The homes were allotted to us in 2010 but the condition of the flats started deteriorating in a couple of years. VMC has done nothing…We are even willing to pay for the repairs, but will they wake up only after we are killed in a tragedy?” Kahar asks.
The residents also recall the 2013 collapse of the Madhavnagar twin towers in Atladara of the VUDA that left 11 persons dead. Lila Pawar, another resident, says, “We were living in our slums in the Nalanda area when we were evicted in 2010 and shifted here… If they had to hand out such substandard homes to us that are worse than our slums, why did they shift us in the first place? The VMC had taken samples of the structure also but not done anything about it.” However, Nileshkumar Parmar, executive engineer at Affordable Housing of VMC, said the maintenance of the homes is a responsibility of the residents.
“We gave the homes to the beneficiaries in 2010… In all affordable housing schemes, once the houses are allotted and the possession is handed over, it is the responsibility of the residents to maintain the structures. The VMC is not responsible for maintaining the housing colonies after the possession is handed over. But the occupants in most colonies do not maintain the structure and it ends up deteriorating over the years due to heavy leakage and other damages. In this particular colony, too, we have already told them to repair their structures but they have not yet done so,” Parmar said.
Senior VMC officials said the Municipal Commissioner had also directed officials to conduct a safety audit of the building Friday, following complaints and serve the necessary eviction notice to the occupants to avert any tragedy.
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