kolkata: The state Fire and Emergency Services department is planning to rope in private agency for speeding up the process of fire audit across the state.
"We have been doing more than 250 fire audits every month in housing complexes, shopping malls, markets etc with our limited manpower and resources. The exercise has proved fruitful as we have come across negligence in a number of cases. So, we feel that more and more fire audits are the need of the hour to prevent fire incidents. Hence, we are planning to rope in a private agency for speeding up the exercise. The agency will be set a target," Bose said after holding a meeting with senior officials of the department in presence of the department's additional chief secretary Manoj Agarwal and DG Neeraj Nayan Pandey .
A high-level meeting will be held next Monday. Bose said in the three recent incidents of fire—at a wooden godown at Nimtala Ghat Street; at battery factory in Dankuni and the warehouse on the land of Syama Prasad Mookherjee Port (SMP) on Taratala Road—negligence has been found on the part of the concerned authorities as per prima facie report. The wooden godown at Nimtala neither had fire license nor basic fire safety mechanism in place. The warehouse that was allotted on license basis by SMP did not have a fire fighting system.
"The detailed report will be made available by this Sunday, following which we will slap notice to the concerned authorities and if we find any lacunae during the probe, FIR will be filed," Bose said. The minister also expressed his concern over fire at Mercantile Building on more than one occasion in the recent past and convened a meeting in this regard next Monday.