‘What if I get trapped?' Lifts start in Ghaziabad condo, but residents scared to enter

Time of India

06-05-2025

Ghaziabad: After spending five days cooped up in their flats, 3,000 families in Siddharth Vihar 's Prateek Grand City on Tuesday started to pick up bits and pieces of their normal routine — kids back to school, others to offices and many out to pick up groceries or meet neighbours.Lifts at all 24 towers of the highrise society, which has around 28 floors in each tower, stopped working on May 2 as a surge of water and sewage flooded its basement when digging for an adjacent residential project ruptured a drain near the Pratap Vihar water treatment plant the previous evening.By Tuesday evening, one lift out of three in each tower was working but residents said many only functioned intermittently. Ashu, who lives on the 27th floor in Tower C4, told TOI there was no light in the lone functional lift in the tower. "When I got in, water was still dripping inside the lift. I am too scared to let my children use the lift. What if they are trapped inside?"Kaushal Gupta (67), who lives on the third floor of Tower C15, said her knees have given way from climbing stairs to pick up groceries over the last two days. "Lifts have started working today. But the water supply is patchy. It is a pain to lift water buckets from different places, even if it means we can carry them back to our floor in the lift," Gupta told TOI.Gaurav Goyal, a resident of Tower C3 and a father of two minor kids, also worries that the putrid water trickling from their taps could give his family a stomach ailment. "Yesterday, our washroom did not have water. We called the maintenance staff, and it was fixed, but briefly. Today, dirty water is supplied to our homes. The developer has delivered 20-litre water jars to each flat, but that's not enough," Goyal said.Jitendra Kumar from tower C1 has two flats, one on the upper ground floor and another on the 14th floor, said the maintenance staff have been cleaning the subbasement, but the foul smell still hung low. "We don't know when the basement will be opened again. We hope there is no outbreak of health hazard," Kumar told TOI.A 65-year-old woman and her husband, who have been forced to stay inside their flat on the 25th floor of Tower C 15, said they spent Rs 1 crore to buy a flat in a gated condominium for a better and secure life. "I did not imagine we would have to go through such horrifying days. We regret buying a property."Acting vice president of ad hoc AOA, RK Bimal, said senior citizens and children had to suffer the most. "Even online orders were left with the tower guard, for which one had to climb down the stairs. I have had to climb 18 floors to pick up groceries. Now, the dirty water supply has given my wife a skin irritation. We are afraid that this is just the beginning," Bimal, who lives in Tower C16, said.Prateek Group's maintenance staff, meanwhile, assured they were providing residents with all the necessary help."Our teams are deployed day and night to ensure that lifts become fully operational, overhead tanks are filled with water, and basement water is cleared and sanitised. We are getting all cooperation from the district administration as well as the GMC," a statement issued by the estate maintenance in charge said.A circular issued by it on Tuesday stated, "Alternate arrangements for the disposal of sewage water have been made. The sewage water is being discharged directly to the STP of Awas Vikas now."