Day after, shopkeepers peg their loss at Rs 8 crore

Amarjot Kaur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 12

A day after 25 shops in the furniture market adjoining the road separating Sector 53 and Sector 54 were reduced to ashes in a fire, shopkeepers claimed they had suffered a loss of Rs 8 crore. With inflammable varnish, thinners and foam at the market, it took firemen all night to douse the raging flames while the wooden furniture continued to smoulder beneath the fallen tin sheds even till 11 am. Though there was no casualty, shopkeepers suffered a tremendous financial loss.

The president of the New Furniture Market Association, Satish Kumar, claimed that the shop owners had incurred a loss of around Rs 8 crore. This was the ninth incident of fire since 1999 in the 33-year-old market that hosts 114 furniture shops and gives employment to some 5,000 people, he said, adding that only around 10 shopkeepers among those whose shops were destroyed in the fire had their goods insured.

An eyewitness to the incident, 18-year-old Shebaj, who works at the now burnt down Sarav Noor Furniture and Cabinets, said, “I saw a shop or two getting burnt around 9.55 pm. Within minutes, it consumed the whole market opposite the gurdwara.” The owner of the shop, Rajinder Bansal, said: “Goods and stock worth Rs 60 lakh went up in flames; I have a family to support. I don’t know if I’ll be able to recover the loss,” he said.

Kabir Alam (56), the owner of Kabir Furniture House, was in a shock over his Rs 25-lakh loss. “This is the third time that my shop got burnt down. Earlier, it had caught fire in 1999 and then in 2012. With no insurance, I’ll have to start from scratch,” he said.  Vijay Verma (52) of Verma Glass Store said, “We don’t get insurance because we don’t have pucca shops. I have lost Rs 7 lakh.” Satish’s son Sanjeev Kumar, assistant secretary of the association, said, “ Though councillor Satish Kainth offered help, our demand for a designated furniture market has fallen on deaf ears. 

Former Punjab Governor and UT Administrator Sunith Francis Rodrigues had assured that we would be allotted a separate space for the market, but nothing has been done yet. For now, we will help shop owners by collecting funds between ourselves, but we need a permanent solution to this problem.”

MC Commissioner seeks report

The Chandigarh Municipal Corporation has written to the Estate Office of the UT Administration to ensure proper fire arrangements to prevent such incidents in the future. KK Yadav, MC Commissioner, on Wednesday sought a report on the incident from the Chief Fire Officer  and directed  him to take  up the matter with the Estate Office as the  land on which the shops were situated has already been acquired  and belongs to the Administration. Anil Kumar Garg, Chief Fire Officer, MC, said the exact cause of the fire was yet to be  ascertained. Garg said preliminary investigation suggested that the fire spread  after two  drums of oil kept in a shop caught fire.