DHIRAJ HARMALKAR
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VASCO: Forty-five dangerous structures have been identified by the Mormugao Municipal Council in the municipal area. From those 45 structures, six structures belong to the municipality. Goa Engineering College inspected these dilapidated structures. MMC is waiting for the structure stability test reports, said MMC engineer.
There is an uncertainty about the 45 structures which are in a dilapidated condition and might come down at any time. The recent incident of an old structure from Panjim partially collapsing due to the heavy rainfall has raised concern about the people living and working under such age old buildings across the municipal areas of the State.
In Port town the dangerous structures need to be demolished before they collapse and cause greater harm to the lives of the people. As per the information given by the Municipal engineer, from Ward 1 to Ward 6 there are six such dangerous structures, from Ward 7 to Ward 12 there are 7 such dilapidated structures and from ward 13 to ward 25 there are around 32 age old structures present in the municipal jurisdiction. All of them have been served notices to vacate the premises.
He further said that of these 45 structures, six belong to MMC and from those six, a letter to GEC for structure stability test of four have been sent. GEC has done the inspection. Engineer also mentioned that before the first wave of COVID-19 there were personal hearings conducted by the MMC Chief Officer and the occupants of the structures.The hearings got stopped due to the pandemic.
When questioned about the present status, the engineer said, “MMC had sent a reminder letter to GEC on September 21, 2020, asking to submit the report of the findings of GEC. Now the MMC is waiting for the GEC report to take further course of action” he added.
Meanwhile, due to the recent continuity of heavy rainfall for the past few days, the Mormugao municipality building has started leaking in several places. The office of the Civil Supplies Department, which is housed in the municipality building, also witnessed leakage which caused inconvenience to the visitors and the staff.
It may be recalled that two weeks ago an old dilapidated building’s partial structure gave its way after the continuous rainfall that was witnessed in Goa. All over the State, the heavy rainfall led to the overflowing of dams, flooding in the low lying areas and even old structures were collapsed. One such example was a Portuguese era footbridge at Paikul village of Sattari taluka which was the talk of every Goan. Considering above issues it is necessary that the concerned govt agencies and authorities should take right steps to avoid any untoward incident and loss of life.
