PUNE: Continuing its drive against illegal scrap godowns and industrial units in Kudalwadi area of Chikhali, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) officials demolished 806 structures spread over 96 acres on Tuesday.
The civic officials had demolished 2,137 structures spread over 372 acres in last four days.
These establishments operated without consent from PCMC’s building permission department and Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. Besides, the labour laws were also not followed by the owners. The civic body had served notices on 4,300 such structures last year, and the officials plan to demolish all of them during the ongoing drive.
“Our action against scrap shops in the city will continue, and we will demolish all such structures built violating norms in the coming days. Our drive is not limited only to Kudalwadi as we have already started serving notices to similar establishments in other areas like Walhekarwadi, Pimpri, and Kalewadi, and they will also face action,” municipal commissioner Shekhar Singh said.
He said that the structures in Kudalwadi did not have NOCs from PCMC’s fire brigade department, and frequent fire incidents were reported from the area. The municipal corporation decided to act against scrap centres after a fire incident was reported at an illegal manufacturing unit at Talawde in which 14 people were killed. Since the biggest cluster of scrap shops was in Kudalwadi, we started the action from there, Singh said.
A trader from Kudalwadi said, “A large number of migrant workers from UP and Bihar who were employed with these industries are sleeping on roads for the last three days. Since the structures have been demolished, they are both homeless and jobless.”
