The 120-year-old British structure houses the offices of tehshildars of Pune, Haveli, two city survey offices, a police station and a sub-jail.
The space crunch at the ‘Mamledar Kacheri’ (office) in Shukrawar Peth is making life difficult for both citizens and officers alike. The 120-year-old British structure houses the offices of tehshildars of Pune, Haveli, two city survey offices, a police station and a sub-jail.
Although the state government has plans to construct a seven-storey building at this site, the slow pace of work is taking a toll on the day-to-day functioning of the offices.
On an average, the office gets more than 1,000 visitors every day, but basic infrastructure such as toilets are missing. Apart from this, most of the passages between the offices have been occupied by agents.
An officer, on condition of anonymity, said that often a stampede-like situation breaks out in the narrow corridors when the people start rushing to the respective offices to get their work done. Parking is also a major problem at this office, forcing many people to park their vehicles on the roads.
A senior officer said that the working conditions at the office leaves much to be desired. “The water supply in this office is erratic. Besides, there is no separate provision for drinking water, neither for the citizens nor for the employees,” he said.
Pointing out to the absence of proper fire fighting equipment, the officer said that land records of 160 villages of Haveli taluka were destroyed in a blaze in January.
“Other than a few defunct fire hydrants there are no arrangements for fire fighting in this office,” he added.
Anil Pawar, resident deputy collector, admitted to the problems at the office. However, he was quick to point out that plans are in the pipeline for renovating the office. “The public works department (PWD) is looking after the renovation of this building,” he said.
When contacted, an officer from the PWD said that the state government has sanctioned plans for construction of a seven-storey building, to be built on built-own-transfer (BOT) basis. The contract for the project has been given to Kakade Kamdar builder, but nothing has materialised yet.
“The plans are yet to be sanctioned,” said V Phohanekar, junior PWD engineer, Pune.
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