Eleventh hour: Notices for dangerous structures reissued amid rain forecast

SBCA warns residents to immediately vacate dilapidated structures

SUKKUR/ KARACHI: Hours before Karachi and other parts of Sindh braced for monsoon showers, the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) realised its charter of duties and reissued notices for dangerous buildings in Karachi and Sukkur.

In its press release, the SBCA's technical committee warned residents of hazardous buildings through media to immediately vacate the dilapidated structures.

Assuming their duties to merely issuing warning notices through the media, none of the officials in SBCA and the local administration in Karachi and other cities are willing to take responsibility to get these buildings evacuated well ahead of the monsoon rains.

The SBCA has declared 327 buildings in the province 'dangerous'. There are 24 buildings in Saddar Town's Old Town Quarters, 20 in Lyari, 20 in Liaquatabad and 28 in Ranchore Lines Quarters, and six in Sukkur, four in Larkana and seven in Mirpurkhas regions.

According to a press statement, SBCA DG Noor Muhammad Laghari has already imposed emergency in the authority in the wake of monsoon season and an emergency centre has been set up, which is functional round the clock.

Apart from this, the technical committee has stated that the dangerous buildings, which are 308 in the metropolis, are a threat to the lives of its residents as the structures will not be able to hold their weight during the rains.

Due to this reason, the press release stated, the buildings may collapse at any time. The SBCA has also asked the residents to stay away from such buildings during the rains.

Shifting responsibility

SBCA structure director Ali Mehdi explained that the authority's responsibility is only to notify the dangerous buildings - it is the local administration, including the commissioner office, which has to get the structures vacated. The commissioner, he said, has got magisterial powers, which the SBCA does not have.

Responding to this, additional commissioner-I Muhammad Aslam Khoso said it was purely the responsibility of the SBCA to get hazardous structures vacated. He said the deputy commissioner office of the respective district could provide assistance if sought by the SBCA in writing. "We have already issued directions to the SBCA to get the dangerous structures vacated in the city before rainfall," he said.

According to Mehdi, the technical team of the SBCA carries out the survey regarding the hazardous buildings and submits a report to the secretary of the dangerous building committee. The committee, he said, comprises members of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and SBCA officials.

Talking about the kinds of dangerous structures, he said there are buildings that are made of steel or reinforced cement concrete (RCC) structures. In some instances, he added, there are wooden roofs, which are dangerous. He said that there are some 100-year-old buildings, which never collapse during rainfall while some hardly 60-year-old structures collapse.

Final notices issued in Sukkur

The buildings that have been declared dangerous and issued final notices by SBCA in Sukkur include Royal Apartments and Shabbir Plaza, both located at Racecourse Road, Rizwan Plaza at Shikarpur Road, an old house at Bunder Road, Al Hamd Plaza at Queen's Road and VIP Plaza at Workshop Road, among others.

An official of the SBCA, requesting anonymity, confirmed that final notices were issued to the owners of the faulty structures. He said that last month, SBCA Karachi committee for dangerous buildings visited Sukkur to inspect the structures. The committee had declared all the buildings dangerous and ordered that final notices for their demolition be issued. He added that the residents were also issued notices six months ago, but they ignored them.

SBCA Sukkur regional director Syed Ayub Shah, who has been suspended, told The Express Tribune that he was suspended because he wanted the builders to abide by the building laws while constructing high-rise structures.

During his visit to Sukkur in April 2016, Sindh chief secretary Mohammad Siddique Memon issued a notification banning construction of high-rise buildings, Shah said. Memon had said that the under construction high-rise buildings were approved before the ban and therefore, cannot be demolished. However, future construction approvals will be restricted to ground-plus-one floors.

Shah termed majority of the high-rise buildings illegal as these do not have fire exits. He further quoted an example of the Baldia factory fire and a building in Clifton, saying both architects and builders neglect the design and construction of fire exits in high-rise structures.

Sharing his experience, Shah said after the Baldia factory fire, which claimed hundreds of lives, "I submitted a report about the need to provide fire exits in buildings but the then SBCA director-general Manzoor Kaka removed me from my post."

"Sukkur has been turned into a jungle of cement and concrete by the builders," Shah said, adding that architects and civil engineers are duty bound to provide parking, proper ventilation and fire- exits. He also criticised builders for using substandard construction material to mint money.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2016.