Govt sets up Jha Com to probe Canacona building mishap
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 06 January 2014 21:05 IST
Goa government has set up an inquiry committee headed by retired IAS officer to probe into the causes that led to the collapse of buildings in Canacona and the persons responsible for this horrifying mishap.
Chief minister Manohar Parrikar told a news conference today evening that retired IAS officer V K Jha would be assisted by a civil engineer and an architect.
Parrikar said he prefers such a committee rather than a judicial probe with practical suggestions from technical experts.
The committee would also be told to suggest a line of action at administration level to avoid such kind of incidents in future.
“It will give direction to the municipalities and village panchayats to take all kind of safeguard in approving the projects and licensing procedures”, said Parrikar.
Though Parrikar agrees that procedure for such construction activity has been defined at different departmental levels, the committee would be told to redefine it with proper checks and balances, so that nobody could misuse its powers.
“The Canacona mishap happened because some authorities misused its powers while the illegalities went unchecked. This is an eye opener for us. We require better guidelines”, said the chief minister.
On the other hand, the government has also decided to issue the guidelines afresh to all the municipalities and village panchayats in approving constructions and issuing them occupancy certificates.
“In this case, the occupancy certificate was issued much before the building was completed. Such incidents should not reoccur”, he said.
He is also planning to make soil testing mandatory before approving the plan of any building and insist on approval by chartered engineer and architect before issuing occupancy certificate.
The buildings that collapsed in Canacona had raised its columns in a soft soil used to reclaim the paddy field. The columns sunk and poor quality construction collapsed, killing over 25 workers while injuring 22.
The government will also issue proper guidelines to the ready-mix concreting units which, said Parrikar, have not been using defined proportion of concrete mixture.
