City rising high at residents cost?

Jan. 12: It was a black Sunday for the family of 11 year-old Kaviarasan. The boy fell off the terrace while trying to feed pigeons. His bizarre death came just days after 39-year-old Parijat Chatterjee fell from the seventh floor apartment of a high-rise complex in Whitefield while showing prospective buyers around as he was trying to sell it. And only a couple of months ago 12-year-old Allan Jan Vengen Barraza fell to his death while playing on the terrace of his seven-storey Cunningham Road apartment building.Although high rise buildings are here to stay considering the pressure on land in the city with its growing industrialistion and population, these entirely avoidable deaths raise questions about their safety. The time has obviously come to keep greater tabs on the quality of material used and the safety aspects that have been integrated into the planning of the buildings that are changing the skyline of the city, making it more like Mumbai with every passing day, to make sure there are no more accidents such as the ones witnessed recently. President of the Federation of Jayanagar Residents' Association, Bhaskar Murthy, blames the practice of builders sub-contracting the jobs given to them for balcony railings giving way and so on, as he feels this impacts the quality of work done. Severe competition in the sector is also causing builders to hurry up with projects while compromising on the quality of material and work, he regrets. President of the Bengaluru Realtors Association of India (BRAI), Irshad Ahmed, strongly feels an agency must be set up to keep a check on the safety of high rise buildings when under construction. A lot of safety issues are involved when installing elevators, balcony railings and building stairways that need special attention, he explains, cautioning that the agency in question must be free of corruption to ensure that builders don't get away with irregularities.The matter obviously needs urgent attention as lakhs of Bengalureans live i! n high r ise apartments with roughly around 10,000 of them buying apartments every year in the city. There is little doubt that the government needs to restore their peace of mind by taking all neccessary steps to make sure the builders toe the line in all aspects. People falling off from balconies sounds scary, says Abhishek Singh, a software engineer, who is hoping to move into a high rise apartment soon. No matter how many times I visit the site during the construction phase I will not be able to tell if the material being used is substandard or not. So it is essential that a government agency is established to keep a check on such aspects, he underlines.

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