Dehiwala residents follow suit after Mount Residents’ Association
Taking a leaf from the Mt. Lavinia Residents’ Association, the citizens at the bordering town, Dehiwala got together recently to form an association of their own.
“We started this in late July to fight related unauthorised structure issues and mainly corruption,” a member of the Dehiwala Residents’ Association (DRA) told the Business Times.
He said they appointed DRA committee and are now in the process of collecting members. He noted that most residents are facing a myriad of issues owing to high-rises on narrow roads, apartment builders not adhering to the standards, traffic congestion on these roads, noise pollution and general discomfort.
“It’s beginning to take its toll on these residents,” the member said. He noted that the residents, under the guidance of the Mt. Lavinia Resident’s Association took a strong stance to be organised as they had, had enough. Also the authorities – Urban Development Authority (UDA), the Police, etc had a lethargic attitude which angered these residents, he added. The residents fear that some of these authorities may be under the influence of cash-rich builders. “We’re now collecting evidence on this” he said.
Section 13 of the UDA regulations insist on submission of detailed structural plans together with design calculations, results of soil tests, soil bearing capacity, type of foundations, type of piles, method of pile drilling and machinery to be used for piling work.
However, it is learnt that many building permits was approved without any of this information. The member said that potential buyers are kindly advised to be cautious when buying a condominium property in Mount Lavinia to make sure that the condominium property that they intend to purchase, is not an illegal and/or unauthorised construction, has necessary clearance from the relevant authorities such as Urban Development Authority and/or the Condominium Management Authority and/or local authority etc. The Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia Municipality has more than 4,000 unauthorised structures, a Ministry of Megapolis official told the Business Times. Authorities say that those in power during the last regime had made billions of rupees during their tenure with such construction approvals. “The officers have approved the project basically for their own profit,” the official added.