The civic body’s move follows close on the heels of chief minister
Mamata Banerjee’s meeting on fire safety norms in city markets.

Close on the heels of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s meeting on fire
safety rules in city’s markets, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation top
brass on Monday held a meeting with city’s shop owners and handed over
them a guideline for upgrading fire safety norms in all city markets.

It has been decided that a special task force – made up of KMC market
department officials and police officers – will raid each private market
twice every week, once during the day and the other at night. The
objective is to check out whether outsiders are taking shelter inside
the private markets and whether they are cooking on the premises.

The chief minister had expressed her surprise after the Surya Sen
Market blaze took 21 lives – mostly outsiders who had assembled on the
mezzanine floor of the four-storeyed building to spend the night. Owners
of the private markets will be asked to engage private security guards
to keep tabs on fire-safety norms. Activities of these guards will be
monitored centrally by KMC market department officials.

Some of
the traders’ organisations which participated in the meeting include
Federation of Traders Organisation (FTO), Federation of Traders’
Association (FTA) and traders from Sealdah Koley market. The secretary
of FTO,
Rabindra Nath Koley, said that it was an uphill task for small traders
to pay for modernisation of firefighting systems in private markets
unless the KMC provided assistance.

After a week-long survey
after the Surya Sen Market inferno, KMC officials have identified 278
markets in seven boroughs of the city which do not have even the basic
firefighting measures in place. A team of KMC officials found some
well-known and busy KMC markets in a mess in terms of implementation of
fire safety measures.

“Some of the major markets such as
ultadanga Telengabagan bazar, Sreemani market, Hatibagan market, Allen
market, Sealdah Baithakkhana bazar are some of the major private markets
visited by the KMC team after Surja Sen market blaze.

“These
markets need an overhaul of fire safety measures. The owners will be
asked to implement all fire-afety norms in phases. The owners will be
asked to install firefighting equipment and train their security guards
to handle the gadgets. We will arrange for such a training programme,”
said Tarak Singh, MMiC (markets). “The visit to the various markets is
on and will be completed in a week,” Singh added.

A senior
market department official said that there are around 700 private
markets across the city, apart from 46 municipal markets.

“It
is really an uphill task for us to keep a tab on the all private
markets. We are trying to zero in on some of the major private markets,”
said a KMC market department official.