Team Herald
MARGAO: Margao Municipal Council Chief Officer is considering moving for disconnection of water and power connections to all the establishments continuing business in buildings that were identified to be unsafe by the council way back in 2016.
MMC engineers had identified 11 buildings in the city to be unsafe and accordingly on 1st September 2016 issued notices to the owners of the building and since then the matter has been hanging fire.
While the owner of one building namely Manu Fernandes who owns the building having Sabina restaurant produced a certificate from an engineer stating that the building is structurally sound another owner sought the structural stability report from the MMC.That is when the MMC started looking out at preparing the stability audit and approached the Public Works Department to do the same. However, on February 22, 2018 the Executive Engineer of PWD wrote to the MMC chief officer that they do not have the equipment to conduct the structural audit and hence expressed their inability to do so.
Vide a letter dated April 30, 2018 the MMC then appealed to Goa Engineering College to conduct the structural audit. However, the Goa Engineering College has till date not replied to the letter nor even acknowledged receipt of the same.
The Municipal Council has now asked the owners of the buildings to do the structural audit of their buildings and submit the documents to the council at the earliest failing which the council plans to take stringent action to ensure that people’s lives are not at risk.
“We shall first go in for cancellation of their power and water connections and then even consider cancelling their trade license,” said Chief Officer Siddhivinayak Naik who argued that lives of people are at risk as the safety of the buildings is under a cloud.
