VADODARA: After Jambuva, Kishanwadi has become the second housing scheme in which the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) has declared 24 blocks dilapidated. The VMC itself had constructed these blocks in 2010.
The notices were pasted on 28 of the 94 blocks in the housing scheme for the urban poor. The notices ask residents to vacate these houses and stay in them only after they are repaired. The civic body is expecting people to repair the blocks where the quality of construction had come under a scanner soon after they were allotted to the beneficiaries. Put together, the blocks that were issued notices have 896 houses.
The VMC had issued a similar notice to residents of the Jambuva housing scheme last month. On Wednesday night, an elderly woman there died when concrete for the ceiling fell on her when she was having dinner.
The Jambuva and Kishanwadi housing scheme for the urban poor had come up under the Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) component of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The residents who were from various slums were ousted and given houses in such schemes.
The allotments of houses in Kishanwadi which has 3,008 houses in 94 towers were done between 2010 and 2012. During the first monsoon itself, water had started leaking from the terraces of the blocks. The VMC had to take corrective measures to ensure that the issue was resolved. Incidents like plastic overhead water tanks bursting or leaking, plaster from the ceiling falling on the floor, and others were reported periodically from Kishanwadi.
Ghanshyam Bharucha, a resident of the Kishanwadi housing scheme, said that they lost their dwellings to demolitions in 2006-07. “Between 2010 and 2012 houses were allotted to us here. Since 2012 itself, we started facing major issues and kept raising them with the VMC. We have even given memorandums to the civic body,” Bharucha said.
Leader of the opposition Congress party Ami Ravat said that she had dug up documents regarding the housing schemes from the civic body. “The houses have come up at a very high cost even when compared to houses made by builders with land in those days. The condition is the same across several such schemes which were cleared in a hurry in 2009,” she said.
A VMC official said that the residents were owners of the houses and repairs were their responsibility. “A part of the problem is due to the lack of maintenance over the years. The condition is not similar in all the blocks,” he added.
Bharucha rubbished this argument saying that the quality of construction was bad in most blocks and this was the reason for their present condition. “The VMC is responsible for the shoddy work,” he said.
