Criminal negligence
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who arrived at the site of Saturday’s disaster in Canacona within an hour of the Chaudi building collapse said the shoddy construction and the faulty design had caused the five-storey structure to cave in. One of the pillars of the mega housing complex which supported 15 apartments, some of them with three bedrooms, had been set in a marshy paddy field. It apparently sank taking the building down like a tottering pile of Lego blocks.
The point is, if the flaws—and these are not minor ones—of the structure were so visibly apparent to the chief minister on the day of the tragedy, why were these not noted and acted upon by the state authorities? Sports Minister Ramesh Tawadkar, the local MLA, not only lived in the complex, but also ran his private office in it. Mr Tawadkar who now finds himself in the vortex of allegations swirling around the Mumbai based realty promoters, Bharat Developers, who have been accused of getting away with illegalities like cutting into a hill and reclaiming a marshy area, had the moral obligation to act against the builders. But like all self-serving politicians, he chose to look the other way, allowing his once small coastal village to become a target of unconscionable real estate sharks from outside Goa.
By the last count Monday evening, 17 people have lost their lives in this manmade disaster. Rather than help in the rescue operations, both the contractor of Ruby Constructions Vishwas Dessai, who goes as director of Coastal Builders and the high-flying partners of Bharat Developers, Pardip Singh Birring and Jugdeep Kumar Sehgal, did a complete vanishing act, leaving the authorities guessing as to how many people were working at the site and how many remained trapped. If this is not the lowest of lows in human indecency, one wonders what is.
The government Sunday announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the relatives of those who died in the crash. This may at best help tide over the families of the workers and others, but it will be only a small measure of the obligation that is due to those who died so needlessly. What we expect from the government is accountability and justice. Accountability from those in government who failed to stop the construction with its obvious structural defects and shoddy material, and criminal action against the promoters and builders.
So far all the key players in the Ruby Residency tragedy have gone underground, their offices are locked, their mobiles have been switched off, their otherwise very busy office phone lines ring intermittently and there’s no one to respond. It is incumbent upon the government to ferret out these people, arrest them and put them on trial for criminal negligence, because now even the second building in the complex is expected to come down.
The very fact that a massive housing complex like Ruby Residency with 124 apartments was allowed in a small village like Chaudi underscores the extent of the sellout by Goan politicians. Apart from the residential complexes, the promoters of Bharat Developers, one of them an NRI and another a Briton were advertising commercial complexes, hotels and resorts in Canacona. They said they had identified the “huge demand” for service apartments in the area. Obviously, when the political class is so willing, the sky is the limit for new investors in Goa.
If the flaws of the structure were so visibly apparent to the chief minister on the day of the tragedy, why were these not noted and acted upon by the authorities?
