The Times of India               10.07.2013

GVMC wakes up to unsafe buildings

VISAKHAPATNAM: The collapse of City Light Hotel in Secunderabad seems to have woken up officials of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) on the need to identify unsafe buildings and take action against the owners.

"We are now on the job of enumerating the unsafe buildings in the city," said deputy city planner of GVMC's town planning department Venkata Subbaiah on Tuesday.

Former bureaucrat E A S Sarma said that he has during the last five years written several letters to GVMC highlighting this issue. "I wrote a letter to GVMC addressing additional commissioner M Janaki to take a note of the unsafe buildings and conduct a study on structurally unsafe buildings," Sarma said.

Even new buildings and under-construction structures are also collapsing nowadays because of the substandard material such as sea sand being used by contractors. A building in Dabagardens collapsed few years ago, killing a worker, Sarma recalled.

The GVMC remains clueless on the number of dilapidated buildings in the city as it has not undertaken any survey to indentify such structures on the lines of studies done in Hyderabad earlier. The city has 3,20,855 residential buildings such as individual houses, apartments and housing complexes, 38,839 non-residential buildings including shops, malls, hotels and cinemas, according to GVMC officials. Besides, the city has 13,735 residential-cum-commercial buildings.

Nearly 50% of about 50,000 buildings in zone-I are considered to be unsafe and the authorities, including GVMC, will have to conduct a sample study on the durability of the buildings with experts, particularly from Andhra University, according to general secretary of GVMC Contractor's Association O S R Chowdary.

Despite the threat facing them, some people prefer to stay in decades-old houses on the account of minimal rent charges, he noted. "GVMC should have to dismantle the unsafe buildings for the safety of many lives," Chowdary said.

Janaki said that they will not take any action on the unsafe buildings as of now as they did not have data of the structurally unfit or unsafe buildings. Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) earlier did a survey on such buildings, but GVMC couldn't, she added. The town planning and engineering wings of the GVMC have been instructed to conduct a zone-wise study on the structurally unfit buildings in the city and submit the report within a week.

"Based on the report, GVMC can take action against the dilapidated buildings according to Section 456 of Hyderabad Municipal Act, 1955," Janaki told TOI. GVMC will serve notices to owners to vacate and remove the dilapidated house or building within 24 hours.

Head of the civil engineering department of Andhra University, Prof D S R Murthy said that the authorities were not regularly conducting 'structural audits', which are nothing but examination of the durability and lifespan of a building. Generally, buildings more than 30-35 years and those that have undergone unscientific changes are prone to collapse. "Except heritage structures, residential and non-residential unsafe buildings should have be dismantled on the lines of steps taken in foreign countries," Prof Murthy said.

Deccan Chronicle            10.07.2013

Demolition pending for a year

Hyderabad: The G block in Secretariat that accommodated the offices of former chief ministers like Jalagam Vengal Rao and N.T. Rama Rao was identified as a dilapidated building a year ago, but is yet to be demolished.

GHMC engineers and town planners who took up a fresh survey of dilapidated buildings from Tuesday, identified 157 more buildings in addition to the 274 already on their list. Of the new 157 identified, the G block, located in the state Secretariat is one such.

“Our engineers inspected the G Block building in the Secretariat and said that it has to be demolished. We are writing to the Roads and Buildings Department to demolish the building,” GHMC zonal commissioner (central zone)  Siva Parvathi told this correspondent.

Presently, there is no office in the G Block. Enquires revealed that the G Block was constructed during the Nizam’s reign and was used as an administrative building for 50 years.

The High Court directed state government to take a decision whether to conserve or demolish the building after a public interest litigation was filed, stating it to be a heritage building. A state government committee comprising experts in heritage conservation and heritage lovers inspected the building and submitted a report that it was not on the heritage list.

A panel led by the then chief secretary Pankaj Dwivedi was set up to recommend what should be done. Most of the members favoured its demolition and construction of a new building in its place. The file was sent to the Chief Minister’s office and a decision on it has been pending from almost a year.

GHMC demolishes twelve Buildings in just one day 

Hyderabad: A day after the City Light Hotel building collapse, special teams of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation demolished 12 dilapidated buildings, located at various places, in the city. Riding on the heat generated by the City Light Hotel building collapse, the bull dozers of GHMC faced little resistance although inmates of some of the buildings complained that they were not given sufficient time to vacate.

This is the first time, in the history of the municipal corporation, that 12 dilapidated buildings were demolished on a single day. The demolitions will continue for a week. Citizen should cooperate with GHMC, the officials appealed.

The GHMC officials continued to identify the buildings going by its external appearance only. No engineering and wave tests are being conducted to assess the internal fitness of the beams, columns and ceilings or even the binding strength.