A day after the order of the State Disaster Management Authority granting permission to PVR Naturo Park owned by P.V. Anwar, MLA, at Kakkadampoyil to partially function became public, the All Kerala River Protection Committee has demanded the State government to cancel the order.
The committee said that Sections 55, 30, and 22 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, were totally ignored while issuing the order and alleged that the government was deliberately putting children at risk.
The government order (GO) dated August 21, 2023, says that the committee constituted by the government to carry out design work for risk reduction at the park has found that the construction at the site was executed without any degree of technical proficiency, and that the documents submitted did not have many details. The River Protection Committee questioned the move to reopen the park in the same GO that cited the shortcomings.
Incidentally, the State Disaster Management Authority had recommended that the portion of the park that includes children’s play rides be opened as it was just a garden area on stable ground.
Since the government-appointed committee could not access any reliable documents to carry out technical assessment and to have engineering judgment or conduct design work, it suggested that the owner of the park appoint a project management consultancy to conduct a non-destructive test and evaluate the engineering features of the existing structures.
“It is not clear in the GO whether the private agency appointed for conducting non-destructive tests was approved by the government. When the government has a very good mechanism [such as the Government Engineering Colleges in Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur besides the National Institute of Technology] to test the strength of structures, why would it appoint a small-scale agency for the purpose?” asked T.V. Rajan, State general secretary of the River Protection Committee.
The River Protection Committee also pointed out that the government-appointed committee had taken only the strength of the existing constructions into consideration, and not the land itself. “This is the place that suffered a major landslide in 2018 and many others before and after that. The inclination of the land also needs to be studied,” Mr. Rajan said.
