Old buildings in Mumbai undergo repair before monsoon

Mumbai, May 14 (ANI): With the meteorological department predicting an early monsoon this year, civic authorities in Mumbai are gearing up to prevent calamities arising in the city during the rainy season.

During monsoons in Mumbai the city gets flooded with rain water, throwing the normal city life completely out of gear.

The buildings collapsing during the monsoon are rather common, often causing loss of human lives. In order to prevent such incidents during this year's monsoon, the civic authorities are seized with repairing old dilapidated buildings.

The civic authorities along with the Maharashtra Housing And Area Development Authority (MHADA) recently identified 40 such residential buildings as dangerous, which are in dire need of repair.

The authorities plan to evacuate these buildings and complete the repair work before the arrival of monsoon.

The residents will be provided an alternate accommodation till their houses are declared safe to move in.

"This year we conducted a survey and around 35-40 buildings were identified as dangerous which are in need of repairs and there is a need for shifting the residents to safer place. We will be undertaking this work before monsoon.

So the residents of these buildings will be shifted to transit camps and after repair the building would be given back to the residents," said Pritamkumar Shegaokar, Housing Minister, Maharashtra.

While the authorities make tall claims, residents of one such dilapidated building allege apathy. They say that the authorities are negligent despite several applications.

"During monsoons the condition of Mumbai is very pathetic and especially that of the old buildings. It is the duty of municipal authorities and the Maharashtra government to undertake the repair work of all such buildings before monsoons. There are many buildings, which are very old.

The building in which I live in is itself around 100 years old and has already undergone repair work twice but again it is in need of repairs for the third time but after giving so many applications we have not been able to divert the attention of the authorities towards this problem," said Prafula Desai, a resident.

Nearly every year, the annual monsoon rains, though vital for India's agriculture and overall economic growth, kills hundreds of people and destroys huge swathes of land. (ANI)