Sujit Bose meets divisional officers to push for fire audits

Kolkata: In a bid to speed up the process of fire audits in the city and its adjoining area, State Fire and Emergency Services minister Sujit Bose conducted a meeting with all divisional officers at the headquarters of his department at Mirza Ghalib Street on Thursday.

"We usually conduct a review meeting. Today, director general of fire services, additional secretary and all the all divisional officers were present during the meeting in connection with fire audit. Our focus is markets, shopping mall and other places where several people together should have proper safety equipment. We don't want to give punishment. We want them to abide by the fire safety recommendations and suggestions," said Bose after conducting the review meeting, three days after a massive fire at a six-storey factory in Delhi's Anaj Mandi. The fire caused the deaths of at least 43 people so far. He reiterated that notice has been served in different markets such as New Market, Nanadalal Market and others to follow the proper safety norms.

"A few markets have followed the instructions in the notice and installed proper fire safety equipment. Others are yet to follow. We will follow up and again conduct a review meeting after two weeks," the minister said.

It may be mentioned that immediately after taking over as Fire minister in December last year, Bose had laid special emphasis on fire audits. The fire department has done audits in 1400 places and have stumbled upon lapses in fire fighting infrastructure almost in half of these establishments.

The minister further said that his department will have 11 temporary fire fighting infrastructure at Gangasagar Mela scheduled next month.