80% factories in Jhajjar running without NoC from Fire Dept

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Jhajjar, January 1

Fire safety at industrial units of Bahadurgarh town, located on the Delhi-Haryana border, is being compromised. In all, around 2,500 small, medium and large-scale factories are running in the town and only 300 of these have obtained no-objection certificate (NoC) from the Fire Department.

Sources said most factory owners installed fire-fighting system at their establishments in the beginning just to fulfil the technical requirements to obtain NoC from the department. “Once the factory starts functioning, they do not bother about maintenance of the fire-fighting system. The negligence sometimes proves tragic in case of fire. For want of maintenance, fire extinguishers do not work at the time of exigency and fire tenders have to be pressed into service to douse the flames,” said an official wishing anonymity.

Sources said the authorities woke up from their slumber only after a mishap had taken place. They start conducting surprising inspection at factories and issue notice to those without proper arrangements to deal with fire exigencies. Such an exercise always proved to be eyewash as factory operators start violating the rules after sometime.

“Several fire incidents in factories claimed lives of labourers and caused a huge loss to property and machinery in Bahadurgarh town in the past few years. Even then, factory owners don’t pay heed to ensure safety of their workers and property against fire,” sources maintained.

Ravinder Kumar, Assistant Fire Officer (AFO), Bahadurgarh, said as per rules, factory owners were legally bound not only to get the fire-fighting system maintained at regular interval but also ensure training to workers for proper use of the system so that they could efficiently use the equipment in the case of fire.

“Due to an acute shortage of staff, we are unable to conduct inspection at all factories in the district regularly. However, we issue notices to those factories which fail to get NoCs regarding fire safety in due time,” said the AFO, adding that old factories had to get their NoCs renewed every year.