Chandigarh says no to fire academy citing low population

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 24

The UT Chief Architect has turned down the request for opening up a fire academy in the region.

The academy would have aimed at giving training to firefighters from different states and to make people aware about safety in the event of any disaster, flood or fire mishap. In a recent fire incident at a PG in Sector 32, girls trapped had little to no awareness about saving themselves, express UT officials.

“If an academy is set up, we will be able to call students from different educational institutes and professionals in groups to give them a demo on fire drills. The academy will undertake practical sessions on dousing flames and making public aware about using fire extinguishers,” said an official.

Giving a reference to the Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) guidelines of Government of India, the Chief Architect said the fire training institute was a facility for cities with 50+ lakh population. “As per the Census of India-2011, the existing population of the UT was 10.54 lakh and the projected population for 2031 is 16 lakh people. Thus, the requirement a training institute is unjustified,” replied the Chief Architect to an MC’s query for availability of land for the creation of the training centre under the newly proposed plan of modernisation of fire and emergency services in the country (2012-2017).

The MC has now written back to the UT Administration to reconsider the proposal for the allotment of land for the training academy.

The civic body contended there was a fire training centre in Goa whose population was 18.2 lakh in 2012. “The guidelines of the URDPFI are also applicable to the UT Police Department whose recruit training centre is already functioning in the city with the same population. Also, there is no fire academy in the region,” stated the MC.

Rs 2 crore earmarked for fire academy

Rs2 crore has been earmarked in the 2020-2021 Budget for setting up a fire academy by the civic body. Besides, the corporation has also kept a provision for Rs2 crore for machinery and equipment, Rs2.90 crore for major works and Rs2 crore for other charges.

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