School buildings to serve as community shelters: MCD

New Delhi, Aug 18 (UNI) The Municipal Corporation of Delhi is considering building up of at least five schools in each of the 12 zones in the city that could also serve as community shelters in case Delhi is hit by natural disasters like earthquakes.

The shelters would be big enough to accomodate large number of residents hit by a natural calamity like earthquake.

This was disclosed by the Addtional commissioner (Engineering) of MCD, Naresh Kumar at a training programme for MCD engineers, aimed at building up their capacity for converting MCD buildings from the present structures to earthquake resistent structures.

The programme was addressed by eminent experts in the field of building earthquake resistant buildings including National Seismic Advisor in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs A S Arya, Chief (BM) of Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council of the Ministry of housing J K Prasad and the MD of the NCPDP in Ahmedabad Rajendra Desai.

Mr Kumar said the MCD would consider constituting a separate Earthquake Resistant Buildings Cell, fully enabled by Chief Engineer, Superintending engineers, Executive engineers, assistant engineers and junior engineers. They would develop required expertise in retrofitting of masonary building and constructing new earthquake resistant buildings.

He also urged upon the need for an early amendment in building bye-laws so as to ensure that in future buildings are constructed in a manner that they withstand earthquakes.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Arya said,''what we need is building community shelters equally spread all over the city and big enough to accomodate large number of people affected by the calamity. These school buildings-cum-community shelters should have toilet facilities for thousands of people. They should also have big open spaces. Japan is already following this practice.'' UNI AR BDP VC1935