Demolition of unsafe Margao building begins

Margao: The long-awaited demolition of the ‘Cabecca de Calconde’ building has finally begun, taking place more than 18 months after the district collector had first issued an order for it to be razed.

Contractors appointed by the apartment owners have started dismantling the unsafe structure, using heavy concrete breakers to carefully extract reusable materials before bulldozers complete the demolition. The building had earlier been declared unsafe by the Margao Municipal Council (MMC).The demolition comes after several years of bureaucratic delays, even though the structure had been declared “unsafe” by the civil engineering department of Goa College of Engineering back in 2018.

Their assessment had described the building as being “beyond repairable and retrofittable condition,” pointing to severely weakened concrete, corroded rebars, spalling structural members, and dangerously hanging GI sheets.The first demolition order was issued in Nov 2023 by then South Goa collector A Asvin Chandru. However, inaction of the MMC chief officer compelled one of the affected parties to approach the high court. The matter took on renewed urgency after two separate parapets collapsed within 48 hours, revealing serious public safety hazards, and prompting current collector Egna Cleetus to issue fresh demolition orders in May.The ongoing demolition exercise is expected to take nearly two weeks.