Building homes like card stacks

When the plaster crumbled at a newly constructed block of apartments in Chennai, built specifically to house people from the low income group, the alarm bells were sounded as quality had been given a miss. Experts warn that if the State continues to take a charity approach to such projects, standards will continue to be a casualty

As one takes the road from Ripon Buildings to Pulianthope along Raja Muthiah Road for about 1.5 km, the lofty apartment buildings at the Kesava Pillai (K.P) Park is hard to miss. They were built as part of a reconstruction project of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB), which has been renamed the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHDB). A total of 864 families residing at the site for more than three decades in low-rise buildings, constructed earlier by the TNSCB, were vacated in 2018 as the buildings had become dilapidated. Besides demolishing the old buildings and constructing 864 new units in high-rise buildings, TNUHDB built an additional 1,056 apartment units which are meant for resettling people from informal settlements on the banks of the Cooum. The construction of the 1,920 units was finished in two phases, in 2019 and 2020, at a total cost of ₹250 crore through PST Engineering Construction, a private contractor.