New Delhi, Aug 5 (IANS): A whopping 76 per cent of people want the government to bring mandatory standards for lift maintenance, according to a report on Saturday.
According to the report by online community platform LocalCircles, nearly one in six people who use lifts have had one or more family members getting stuck in a lift in the last three years.
Only 46 per cent people said they have an Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) contract with the manufacturer.
The report comes as a 70-year-old lady residing in Noida’s Paras Tiera society in sector 137, lost her life on Thursday after being trapped in the lift for 45 minutes. She experienced a terrifying free fall followed by sudden ascent, and despite rushing to a hospital next door she could not be saved.
Media reports said the AMC for lift maintenance had expired a few months ago in June.
Such incidents of people getting stuck in lifts, free fall of lifts are common across not just in residential societies, but office buildings, shopping malls, factories and several other establishment types in the country.
In another case, last week, two kids under 10 in Pune had a miraculous escape from a lift, which went crashing down. Such incidents are common.
LocalCircles conducted the survey on more than 42,000 people living in 329 districts of India. A total of 13,333 people living in buildings with lifts responded to a query on the issue of people getting stuck in lifts.
Another 13,954 people answered on how maintenance of lifts is done. Almost 46 per cent indicated that the lift was being maintained by the manufacturer; 42 per cent shared that it was being maintained by third party contractor; 7 per cent claimed it was maintained by the society staff/ other miscellaneous staff and 5 per cent claimed that no one maintains it but when there are people on call as and when required.
LocalCircles also sought to find out the way forward on having better maintained lifts, where 76 per cent out of 14,973 shared that the government should create mandatory standards for lift maintenance and enforce it.
Given that most new buildings and apartment complexes have lifts, which can be the case for even individual houses having more than one floor, it is important that the government frame mandatory rules for not just the installation protocol of lifts but also maintenance of lifts, they said.