Bhopal: It seems that authorities at National Textile Corporation (NTC) Mill, which was gutted in fire last month, have learnt no lessons. Still the fire safety arrangements at the unit are not at place as they are yet to purchase advance equipment or appoint specialized fire safety officer.
Besides, the authorities are still groping in the dark and are yet to fix responsibility for the inferno. Machines, goods and raw material worth around Rs 100 crore were reduced to ashes when a massive fire engulfed the NTC mill in Chandbad area of the city on February 25. Taking serious note of the incident, union ministry of textiles had sent two officials to the city to taking stock of the situation.
Over ten days have passed, but the committee formed to inquiry in the matter yielded no results. Till date, they are still to come up with cause of the fire or hold anyone responsible for it. The blaze had lasted for over ten hours and only the joint efforts of Bhopal Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) fire wing, army’s rescue team and fire tenders from neighbouring areas could douse the fire.
Later, BMC had pointed out the breach of fire safety norms at the unit claiming that fire extinguishers were non-functional and other safety arrangements were not in place.
Besides, during the initial probe it was found that there was no fire safety officer at the Mill and that an engineer of other department was handling the charge.
Vinod Riccharia, a union leader said that the management has not awakened even after the incident. The situation was life threatening and the authorities should have by now fixed the accountability but despite Centre’s intervention nothing much has happened as far as probe is concerned, he added.
Even today the administration has not upgraded the safety arrangements, said Riccharia adding that neither any equipment were purchased nor any measure to check reoccurrence of such incident has been taken.
The other valuables inside the premises are at equal risk which is national property but the casual approach of the management is likely to harm it, he added.
AK Dixit, the general manager of the National Textiles Corporation Bhopal confirmed that no progress has been made so far in the probe.
The Central government is monitoring the matter and it would be immaterial to comment on it at this point, he added. He also admitted that they do not have any specialized fire safety officer nor have they purchased any other fire safety equipment after the incident.