May 22, 2009 3:08:27 am
About 982 families living in precariously dilapidated buildings in the island city will be asked to vacate their homes by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) before the onset of monsoon.
On Thursday,MHADAs repair board released a list of 35 cessed buidings between Colaba and Sion/Mahim classified as the most run-down buildings after an inspection of each of the 16,195 pre-1960 buildings by the boards officials. In addition to the residential tenants,there are a total of 332 commercial occupants in these buildings.
Nine of these buildings had figured in last years pre-monsoon list of dilapidated buildings too. These include Esplanade mansion near the city civil court at Kala Ghoda which saw a partial collapse four years ago and 299 C and D Botawalla Chawl in Masgaon where residents have for long been resisting forceful evictions.
Subhash Hazare,MHADAs repair board chief officer,said that the list of severely dilapidated buildings have reduced drastically from last years list of 79 buildings. Sachin Ahir,chairman of the board,explained that this is because several buildings have benefited after the state government increased the cap of money allotted for per sq ft of repairs from Rs 1200 to Rs 2000 a sq ft.
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The Mumbai repair board has a paltry budget provision of Rs 50 to Rs 70 crore which it utilizes to repair or reconstruct cessed buildings as well as manage its transit camps. We are in talks with various insurance agencies that are willing to offer us maximum returns for minimum premium in order to provide for insurance cover to all tenants in these dilapidated buildings, said Ahir. He added that a task force has been constituted to evict illegal occupants in MHADAs transit camps spread across 56 locations in Mumbai.
Mostly those from dilapidated buildings are reluctant to shift out as they do not want to be relocated to transit camps in distant suburbs. Already we are in the process of redeveloping the camp at Colaba,another 5000-7000 rooms will be generated on MHADAs share of mill land and through redevelopment of some of the existing transit camps, said Ahir.
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