It’s been over a week since residents of the Jain Westminster apartment on Arunachalam Road in Saligramam complained about a portion of ceiling collapsing in their building and ever since then they have been having sleepless nights.
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Residents said they had been having problems since 2017. The plastering in the walls started peeling off in all the houses at that time. “We thought this was due to some leakage in bathroom. And then problems started in the common area. They [the management] came to do repair work in 2019 without any inspection or methodology,” said M.P. Kumar, secretary of Jain Westminster Owners Welfare Association.
It was then that residents found out that the building was constructed using saline water and because of this the chloride content was high. In the last few months, the building had several issues such as cracks in the walls. And most owners have spent several lakhs of rupees on repairs.
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“In the last one-and-a-half years, we have spent around ₹4.8 crore as repair cost. Each house here has spent ₹3 lakh to ₹5 lakh (depending on repair work). Since this is a life-threatening situation, residents have started spending from their pockets,” said Mr. Kumar.
A resident here said: “We are scared to let children outside. We are not able to sleep. I get worried to even send my wife to the kitchen. What if something falls off,” he said. Some residents said they could not even sell the property. “More than 40% of the people living here are senior citizens. There are many families paying EMI for their houses. Tenants will easily vacate but where will the owners go,” asked owners of the flats.
There are around 613 flats and of them, 486 are occupied. Now, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has directed the Centre for Urbanization, Buildings & Environment (CUBE) to inspect the building. Residents here on Thursday said that the CUBE team was already inside evaluating the building.
Builder in talks
When contacted, the spokesperson of Jain Housing said: “Our management is in talks with the flat owners association. We are about to sign an MoU with the association regarding the modalities of repair and timeline. We will first test the stability of the building and this work is being carried out by CUBE. Based on the study, we will do the rectification at our cost and post completion we will get a certificate,” he said.
The spokesperson said that the problem was due to “chloride induced corrosion”. The company mentioned about issues in the basement and ground floor during 2020, when asked whether a proper check was done at that point, the spokesperson said: “Complete check was done in basement and stilt floor as the symptoms or cracks were predominantly noticed there.”