Delays hamper vacating of old buildings

Mumbai: Delay in redevelopment projects is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t vacate old buildings, risking their lives. Another issue is the size of the houses they get after redevelopment and the location of the transit camps.

Every year ahead of the monsoon, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) prepares a list of dangerous buildings. Not all the buildings need to be vacated.

The buildings are categorised as C1, C2 and C3. A C1 category means the building is very dangerous and needs to be vacated immediately. The C2 category is further divided into C2A and C2B.

In C2A building, the dangerous parts of the building need to be demolished. In C2B, major structural repairs are required.

The C3 category needs minor repairs. After the survey, the civic body asks residents living in dangerous buildings to evacuate them and move to safer places.

“Despite notices and fervent pleas, residents in most of these buildings continue to live in wobbly structures, putting their lives at stake. They even oppose the BMC’s attempts to evacuate these buildings,” said a civic official.

The BMC finds it extremely difficult to evict people from dilapidated buildings as there is a fear among residents that their entire life will be spent in a transit camp as the time taken by the civic body to rebuild these buildings is never-ending.

“We have lived all our life in Byculla, our children study there. The BMC is asking us to shift to a transit camp in Mahul, its very difficult to relocate now and again there is no guarantee that the building will be rebuilt soon. We don’t want to languish in a transit camp for the rest of life,” said a resident of one such building.