PG collapse: Paying with lives

The tragedy that struck the students’ paying-guest accommodation in Satya Niketan area of the capital on Sunday, so far claiming seven lives, is evidently a culmination of regulatory gaps in implementation of building safety codes, municipal oversight and the shortage of accommodation for students. The fact that the 50-year old building collapsed while repairs were being carried out in the basement, parts of which were under rainwater, doesn’t leave much scope for imagining the possible factors that led to the tragedy.

Preliminary investigation reveals that much of the five-floor building was unauthorised as the resettlement colony permits raising only ground-plus-one-level. The plight of the inmates of the building which was used to accommodate 50 students who were packed like sardines, in a Delhi by-lane can just be imagined. While detailed in vestigation would reveal the real causes for the collapse, it is not difficult to glean and guess that there was a vast difference between what the building laws of the civic body—Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in this case— permitted and the structure that stood on the 55-square yard plot. It is evidently not a solitary case of an overcrowded building collapsing under its own weight.

The MCD must be held accountable for negligence in matters of the edifice being permitted to function as a paying-guest facility for such a large num ber of students. Besides unauthorised floors, the pertinent question to be asked is why the facility built for lower load capacity was not vacated while the repair work involved the alteration of as crucial a portion as pillars. The caravan of death in the wake of building collapses has shamefully been rolling on in the national capital relentlessly. The current tragedy is the sixth in the series of major catastrophes this year.

A denim jean factory building collapsed in Kabir Nagar leaving two dead in March. A four-floor building in a narrow residential lane in Delhi's Mustafabad that came crashing down in a vertical "pancake" style, claimed 11 lives in April. A co-working space in south Delhi's Saidul Ajaib area collapsed in May causing six fatalities in May while July witnessed a build ing collapse in Rohini taking three lives. Another building collapse in Welcome Colony in northeast Delhi left six people dead later the same month.

Not merely safety audit gaps, the tragedy also points to deficient housing and accommodation spaces for students coming to Delhi. The facility ‘Students’ Daze’ was located near the South Delhi campus of Delhi University and served as a paying-guest facility for students who mostly crowd into such facilities due to shortage of decent hostel accommodation. It will be imperative for the MCD to suspend the staff members vested with responsibility to carry out safety audit and bring to book owners of such hazardous structures.