Pune: Ready mix concrete operators in the city have paused manufacturing till unified guidelines are created by all authorities concerned even as the civic body continued its crackdown on plants.Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Wednesday demolished illegal constructions, including seven ready mix concrete (RMC) plants, spread over 52,000 sqft in Nagar Road areas such as Lohegaon and Kharadi.“RMC units in and around the city have to face action from multiple authorities, including PMC, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, police and the state pollution board, all of which have different norms,” Pradeep Walhekar, president of Pune RMC Association, said.As many as 150 RMC units are members of the association, he said, and added that the industry in Pune has an annual turnover of Rs 5,000 crore. Walhekar said plying concrete to construction sites was becoming difficult as they had to deal with different rules from different authorities. The larger issue, he added, was not the regulation, but the “lack of coordination, clarity and uniform implementation” by various authorities.Emphasising that the pause in production was not a strike and was a “structured improvement phase”, the official said the association has written to PMC, PCMC, the police and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board seeking uniformity in procedure for RMCs to operate.“We have held discussions with developer bodies and contractors’ associations in the past,” Walhekar added.PMC has sealed or demolished 30 non-compliant RMC plants in the last three months following complaints from citizens about dust pollution.When asked about the action taken on Wednesday, PMC’s anti-encroachment department head Somnath Bankar said, “The constructions were carried out without proper permission of the corporation. The administration razed them down after giving them notices.”A member of the RMC association said they have only four hours, between 12pm and 4pm, to supply concrete to construction sites. “This creates logistical problems and also sets off an unhealthy competition among RMC units, which leads to flouting of norms by some players. The supply cannot happen during the night as there is a ban on construction activity at the time,” the member said.The Pune chapter of Credai said that in the absence of RMC units, developers would be forced to revert to on-site mixing, which would intensify dust pollution and also create challenges in storing materials such as sand, cement, aggregates and fly ash. This makes quality control far more difficult.“The move to stop RMC operations will increase movement of heavy vehicles on the roads. One RMC truck is replaced by several material trucks. The current disruption is already impacting project timelines and could cascade across the real estate value chain,” a Credai official said.
