Mhada survey falls behind schedule

Monsoon is just round the corner but Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada), has still not completed its pre-monsoon survey of buildings in the city.

The survey, which was to be completed by mid-May, hasn't even covered half the structures which Mhada looks after in the city.

The technical training of the Mhada's engineers with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai, which was to start early this year also hangs fire. Instead, there have been four rounds of training in the visual assessment of buildings in the last two months.

"As a part of pre-monsoon survey, we have covered 7,881 of the 16,296 buildings on our list. And we are hopeful that by May 15, we will complete the work," said V G Vani, resident executive engineer, Mhada. He is in-charge of the survey work. So far, 98 buildings have been identified which need to be 'partly demolished and reconstructed'.

"Meanwhile, we are propping up damaged buildings with wooden logs," Vani said.

Though, which should ideally start in February, began in March this year. Despite being late by a month and with less than 15 days before the deadline ends, the officials believe that the work will be completed in time. Sources, on the condition of anonymity, said the authority is winding up the survey in a hurry.

Also, Mhada is using no technical equipment to assess the status of the buildings. It is done by visual inspection only.

The number of collapses since the early 60s have raised doubts on the credibility of Mhada's assessment process. However, IIT hopes that the authority engineers will do a good assessment this time as they have provided the visual assessment training. "We have provided on-site training to the Mhada engineers taking them to the buildings, so it will help them do a detail evaluation of the structures," said Ravi Sinha, professor, IIT, Mumbai.

But there seems to be no time-bound training plan. "We want to carry on training with equipment during the monsoon as most of the engineers will be available that time," Sinha added. However, Mhada officials said it may be next monsoon as the talks are still going on with IIT.

From Colaba to Mahim and Sion, Mumbai at present has around 19,646 old buildings. Of which around 3,000 have undergone repair and reconstruction in the last year and before and the rest have yet to be taken care of.

Based on the year of construction, buildings have been divided into three categories: A,B and C. Those built before 1940 fall under category A, those built between 1940-1950 are put in category B and those constructed from 1950 to 1969 belong to category C.

In the north circle "� between Mahim to Mumbai Central "� there are 7,298 buildings considered old and in south circle "� between Colaba to Mumbai Central "� there are 9,080 of them.