HYDERABAD: Tears run down the cheeks of grief stricken Husna as she has last glimpses of 10 members of her family who were buried alive when their ground plus three-storey house collapsed in Ilyasabad, a katchi abadi, on Tuesday.

“My brother had just started repair of a wall in the house when a labourer noticed the wall bending. They couldn’t get any time to run out for their lives as the entire structure caved in on them,” a sobbing Husna recalls as her neighbours try to console her.

The collapsed building housed four families who had been running bangle manufacturing business in the premises for a long time.

Like Husna, other residents of the shanty town belong to middle and lower middle classes who continue to make alterations in their existing homes to accommodate increasing number of their families.

“Where would they go from here to build a new house of their own, which requires a lot of money which they don’t have. As children are growing up so they add one floor and then another to accommodate expanding families,” says Shahida, first cousin of the deceased, Mohammad Akhtar. Her family, she says, has shifted to some other area but remain engaged in bangle business. “Look at existing civic conditions in this area which make living extremely difficult but people here have compromised with life due to lack of financial resources,” she says as women sit in street to offer condolences to the bereaved family members.

The victims’ funeral prayers were offered on a road in the locality on Wednesday. The last rituals were attended by people of the area, sitting and former parliamentarians and relatives of the victims.

The authorities concerned including district administration, Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) and Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) pass the buck on which department is responsible to enforce construction regulations in Ilyasabad — an old locality in midst of the city.

SBCA’s regional director Tazmir Asim has said that Ilyasabad is an un-regularised katchi abadi which is excludes from the S–BCA’s jurisdiction. “As far as katchi abadis (KAs) are concerned we take care of maps of those houses which fall in regularised abadis otherwise our jurisdiction stands excluded,” Asim said.

He said that SBCA would assist district administration in analysing as to how the building collapsed. “We see lease document first to approve their building plan in line with different parameters that are already defined for the construction of buildings of varying sizes of plots,” he said.

Hyderabad Division Commissio­ner Jamal Mustafa Syed has formed a five-member committee with deputy commissioner as convener to determine the cause behind the tragic incident.

Other members of the committee are; director general of Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA), regional director of SBCA Hyderabad, administrator of HMC and superintending engineer of provincial building circle.

Rustam Lashari, director of Katchi Abadi Authority did not attend phone call despite repeated attempts.

Meanwhile, SBCA officials have collected samples of collapsed building for analysis which will be conducted in Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro.

According to Asim, there are 15 buildings that have been rated as most dangerous and required immediate demolition. “We didn’t get any response from the district administration in this regard nor did we get any positive reply from utilities providers when we informed them to suspend/disconnect utility services of these buildings,” he said.

No FIR of the incident has been lodged so far.

The building is owned by Yamin Siddiqui, brother of deceased Rashid and Arif. Yamin himself lives in a flat in some other area. Residents said that he had hired labourers to start repair work of the wall.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2014