Hoarding collapse in PCMC area rings alarm bells in Pune; PMC asks owners to conduct structural audit
The collapse of an illegal hoarding killing five persons in a locality under the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has set off alarm bells in Pune city. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has directed owners of all hoardings to carry out structural audits, failing which they will be declared illegal and pulled down by the civic administration.
The warning comes against the backdrop of the Indian Meteorological Department predicting strong winds and thunderstorms in the city.
“All the licensed hoardings will have to carry out a fresh structural audit of the structure in the next 15 days and submit the same to the civic body. This is being done to ensure there are no accidents that lead to loss of humans and properties or cause problems for the traffic,” said additional municipal commissioner Kunal Khemnar.
Those failing to do so will be declared illegal and would be pulled down, he said, directing the Sky Sign Department to take action against all illegal hoardings in the city.
According to information, there are a greater number of illegal hoardings in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) areas than the legal ones. “There are a total of 2,629 illegal hoardings in the city while 2,485 hoardings are legal,” said Madhav Jagtap, Deputy Municipal Commissioner and in-charge of the civic anti-encroachment department.
Last year, the increase in the number of illegal hoardings was the maximum at 905 hoardings. Meanwhile, in the last 17 days, 48 illegal hoardings have been identified. “There seems to be a big jump in the number of illegal hoardings in the city but many of them are in the newly-merged villages which were earlier governed by the gram panchayats,” said a civic officer.
He said the civic administration has registered offences against 508 illegal hoardings while issued letters to the police against 493 illegal hoardings. “The PMC has also recovered a fine of around Rs 75 lakh from illegal hoardings and have urged the civic property tax department to cancel the registration of 173 hoardings for clearing their dues,” civic officer said.
