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Journalism of Courage
Last week, heavy rain caused a building collapse in North Delhi’s Sabzi Mandi area on July 31, claiming one life. The following day, another building collapsed in the same area. The same day, three people were injured in two separate building collapse incidents in the city — one in Defence Colony and two in Shastri Park.
On August 2, the wall of a school collapsed in Daryaganj, damaging several parked vehicles. A two-storey building in Jahangirpuri came down the same day, resulting in the deaths of three people.
More than a month after the onset of the monsoon, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) continues to drag its feet over the survey of the unsafe buildings in the city amid concern over such incidents and criticism over the lack of monsoon preparedness. The civic body has already deferred the deadline once.
The MCD’s Building Department is tasked with conducting an annual pre-monsoon survey — the corporation’s junior engineers identify buildings in battered condition, and the owners of these buildings are issued notices and instructed to carry out repairs. If the repairs are not completed within a specified timeframe, the MCD has the authority to carry out demolitions.
The survey starts in April every year and is supposed to be completed by June. This year, the initial deadline to release the findings was June 14. The deadline was then shifted to July 15. As of July 4, the civic body had only completed the survey of the South Zone, identifying four dangerous buildings.
On being asked about the progress made on the survey, the civic body on Tuesday said that 67 dangerous buildings have been identified so far and that the survey is going to take some time before it reaches completion. On being asked how many houses have been inspected so far, the officials refused to respond.
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