In the wake of the church building collapse that claimed three lives, Tirunelveli Corporation has formed a special team to inspect ongoing construction works in schools, colleges and places of worship under its jurisdiction to check violations.
“We’ve decided to complete the inspection within a week and the Corporation will take appropriate action based on the team’s report,” Commissioner R. Lakshmi told The Hindu here on Thursday. Ms. Lakshmi , who was part of the rescue operations on Wednesday night at St. Peter’s Church at Xavier Colony, visited the site on Thursday morning again along with a team to find out the reasons for the accidentand discussed preventive measures.
“Since deviation in executing the permitted structure has become so common in construction of buildings for schools, colleges or places of worship, which are getting regularised later by paying fine, we’re going to stop this menace through such inspections,” Ms. Lakshmi said.
She said that the church administrators had indeed obtained no-objection certificate from the district administration and proper approval for the building plan from the Corporation, which was about to end on July 1, 2015. “The failure to appoint a site engineer to monitor the construction of this massive structure and consequent technical flaw have led to the disaster,” she said.
Asserting that human error and negligence were the reasons for the accident, Ms. Lakshmi said these problems would be addressed by the Corporation through stringent execution of laws.
