Chetla KIT building's roof collapses

Tragedy seems to have a new destination, the City of Joy. A day after a famous building in the Burrabazar area saw a massive fire, on Tuesday, an accident, albeit of a much lesser scale, took place at the KIT housing complex in Chetla after the roof caved in, trapping several under the debris.

The Fire and Emergency services personnel along with their counterparts of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and Disaster Management, rescued those who had been trapped. Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, who visited the spot, said that repair works at the housing complex by the Urban Development department was going on for the past few days and a portion of the roof caved in.

A portion of the roof in Block II caved in at around 3 pm. Eleven people staying in six rooms of the second floor got trapped. Local people informed the Fire and Emergency Services department who went to the spot and began the rescue operation. There are four blocks in the housing complex.

The housing complex constructed in Chetla by KIT had not been repaired for the past forty years. It was inaugurated by the then Urban Development department. The flats were given to people belonging to Middle Income Groups (MIG) and Lower Income Groups (LIG). The building has not been maintained since then. Over the years, KIT housing complexes went under the control of CPI(M). The relatives of the ministers and party cadres got flats in the complexes as well. The erstwhile Left Front government could not hike the monthly rent and due to the low rent, the government failed to maintain them.

The then Finance minister Asim Dasgupta took a plan to sell the flats to the occupants. However, this scheme failed to fetch buyers as the occupants refused to buy flats which needed thorough repairing. However, most of the tenants of flats of KIT housing complexes situated on Rabindra Sarani and Tangra bought the flats at a throwaway price. As the housing complexes had not been repaired, most of the original tenants sublet the flats and moved to other places. The state Housing department had tried to seize the flats which had been let out to others illegally. But the department had to withdraw the move following pressure from CPI(M). After coming to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked the officials of Urban Development department to take up the repair work of the buildings.