Gurugram: Structural flaws in 65 high-rise buildings

Chandigarh: According to the Residents Welfare Association (RWA), around 65 high-rise buildings in Gurugram have structural anomalies and are awaiting auditing by the competent authorities.

In a letter to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal, the RWAs have requested that builders be made accountable for the safety of buildings. Moreover, he said, the authorities should issue Occupation Certificate (OC) only when the safety of the structure is guaranteed.

Since Gurugram is in seismic zone-4 and the buildings are not earthquake resistant, the people living in them get scared when an earthquake occurs.

Issues like exposed iron rods, loose balconies, cracks, damp basements are further adding to the problems. The administration has started structural audit of 37 societies. Most of these have been visually audited.

Speaking to this correspondent over phone, Praveen Malik, President of United Association of New Gurugram, said, “Several letters have been written to the authorities in this regard. Since there are about 67 societies having high-rise buildings in the satellite city that have reported structural defects, structural audit of 32 societies has been conducted by four agencies appointed by the district administration. But the audit was only visual inspection and nothing else, so how can one find structural defects without destructive testing and non-destructive testing which are only two methods to check the strength and defects in the structure and these tests have not been done “

“There are no parameters for structural audit. Besides, the reports of these agencies conducting structural audit should also be made public. Our demand is that competition certificate should be made mandatory for the committees and clauses on structural audit should be included in it. Only a few societies in Gurugram have competition certificates. “There is no accountability for the safety of residents as builders succeed in obtaining occupation certificates (OC) even with the worst quality of work,” he said.

He said otherwise incidents like Chintales Paradiso in Sector 109 partially collapsed as six of its nine towers were declared ‘unsafe’.