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Seventeen families, comprising mostly senior and ailing citizens, who reside in a seven-storey building owned by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) at Deshpande Puram on Karve Road, have been forced to live in a difficult situation after the only lift in the building has been inoperational for the last six months.
Ten of these families had been relocated and rehabilitated to the Mithila building here 18 years ago when work to widen Nehru Road in Rasta Peth-Nana Peth was undertaken.
PMC owns 17 of 21 flats in the Mithila building located in Deshpande Puram. The civic body acquired it after additional floor space index (FSI) was allotted to real estate developers to construct a ten-storey residential complex in the vicinity.
The building is behind the Dashbhuja Ganesh temple on Karve Road.
In 2008, PMC had demolished the Gaikwad building to widen Nehru Road. As per the rules, it provided compensation to the owner of the land and the building while relocating the 10 families, who were tenants for 50 years, to the civic body-owned flats in the Mithila building.
“We were relocated by PMC in 2008 to the Mithila building, as it had demolished the building we were staying in after acquiring the land for road widening. A total of 10 families together got relocated to Mithila building,” said 72-year-old Pravin Redkar, who stays with his ailing wife on the seventh floor.
Redkar added that ever since the relocation, the civic body has not bothered to check their living conditions. He said the building has one lift that was installed 25 years ago. “We pay rent to PMC every month, but it has never looked into resolving our civic concerns. The residents collect money and do small maintenance work with their own expenses. The lift maintenance was also done from the money we collected as it used to break down frequently. Now, the lift has become completely non-operational for the last six months and all the citizens are made to suffer. We live on the seventh floor and my ailing wife is not able to step out as she can’t climb the stairs while returning home,” he says.
There are around 30 senior citizens residing in the building who are afflicted with some ailment or the other. Sixty-eight-year-old Sanju Dalvi, a heart patient who had undergone an angioplasty, also stays on the seventh floor. “The doctor has recommended that I avoid physical exertion, but if I don’t go out for house-related work, then how will things move at home? I climb seven floors whenever I step out of the house for some work despite knowing the risk of doing so,” he said.
Forty-five-year-old Viresh Kumbhar, another resident here, has knee problems. “My knee is injured and I have to climb the stairs to reach seven floors to come home everyday,” he says.
Thirty-seven-year-old Nilesh Pankhawala, who stays with his 74-year-old mother, recently underwent a hernia surgery. “I stay on the sixth floor and have to take the stairs to visit the hospital.
It is very difficult to climb the stairs in this condition but I have to do it. I also have to take my parents for medical check up on a regular basis, which has become difficult as they have to take stairs to climb down and then up,” said Nilesh.
Redkar said, “We approached the PMC administration for the lift to be repaired, but they initially made us run from one office to another and finally the Warje Karvenagar ward office took our application. The civic electrical department, after surveying the lift, told the civic estate department — which is in possession of the building — that the expenditure for the lift is around Rs 30 lakh. The work can only be done after the funds are made available.”
Rajat Bobade, a junior engineer with the electrical department posted at the Warje-Karvenagar ward office, said, “Our team visited the building after receiving the complaint. We did a thorough survey and concluded the lift is 25-years-old. Its life has expired and is in a dangerous condition which cannot be repaired. The only solution is to remove the old Lift and install a new one.”
He added that the property was under the civic estate department’s possession and the civic electrical department only provided its services to civic buildings. “The civic estate department was asked to provide funds to install a new lift in the building, but it responded by saying that civic buildings’ maintenance have to be done by the concerned ward office. The Warje-Karvenagar ward office further conveyed that it has no budgetary provision for this purpose. Thus, the issue is pending.”
A civic estate department officer said that the property is in its custody but its maintenance is done by the administrative office in whose jurisdiction the civic building comes. “The Mithila building is in Warje-Karvenagar ward office area. The maintenance and repair of the building should be looked after by the ward office,” she said.
Sixty-one-year-old Praunati Bhowmick, another resident of the building, said, “The civic administration first shifted us to this building, and has now left us suffering. There is no one to resolve our woes. Are they waiting for something wrong to happen to us?” Bhowmick added that they were only tenants and had no power to do anything new in the civic building.
