The Barisal City Corporation authorities have formed a five-member team to detect vulnerable buildings in the city. Abu al-Masud Mamun, chief assessor of the city corporation, said slack enforcement of the existing laws and lack of public awareness have made a big number of multi-storey buildings in the city vulnerable to accidents like fires or collapses.BCC sources said the team, led by Tariqul Islam, chief engineer of the city corporation, already started work Monday and they will prepare a list of vulnerable buildings and structures in the city, asking the owners to demolish the structure after their detection.
The team has already prepared a list of 37 buildings in a vulnerable position and ordered the department concerned to issue final notice to their owners.
On other hand at least four high-rise buildings on Alekanda Road, Forester Bari Road, Dinobondhu Sen Road and N Hosen Road of the city tilted to another one in recent time.
Fatima Khanam of Alekanda Road claimed that she had several times informed the BCC that her adjacent building had tilted to her building, but the authorities did not take any actions till now.
The same allegation was made by Md Selim of the Forester Bari area.
A huge number of people including students are living in these buildings.
BCC issued notice to the owners of the vulnerable buildings but the owners went to court challenging the notice, said the BCC officials.
Sources at the BCC said there are over 2,000 buildings in the city including 24 10-storey, 258 five to nine-storey, 586 four-storey and 1,135 three-storey.
Most of the high-rises are constructed without fire safety management, violating the building construction and civil defence codes and they may turn into death traps in case of any fire or collapse accident.
Thirty per cent of these buildings are under severe threat of accident as they are not constructed following building construction code, said Motaleb Hossain, executive engineer of the BCC.
Soil strength of the city is not good for constructing buildings over six-storey, he said, adding that about 92 per cent soil test reports say hard layer of the soil is less than 60 feet of the ground with capacity of average 0.9 TSF (tones per square feet), suitable only for three-storey buildings.
Although since 2000 most of the building owners took approval of their construction plan and design from the BCC, they did not properly follow the plan during its construction, BCC executive engineer acknowledged.
The buildings constructed before that had no plan approved by the BCC, he said.
Besides the newly constructed buildings, some of the most vulnerable old structures of the city are the building of Rabindra Nath Sen of East Bagura Road, building of Monu Mia gong at Mainul Hasan Road, Hotel Bahadur at Fazlul Haque Avenue, Mansur Bhaban at Circular Road, Siraz Mahal at Kawnia Road, Syed Manjil at Ishwar Boshu Road, building of Mannan Mridha at Hospital Road, Jalal Mansion of Kalu Shah Road, Shaheed Alamgir hostel of Govt Hatem Ali College, Khanika Bhaban of Medical Collage Lane and Surendra Bhaban Hostel of Govt BM Collage at Hospital Road.
Most of these buildings are very old, tilted and announced abandon by Public Works Department after crack developed in different parts of their roof and wall.
-With New Age input
