Urban News

In a letter to 15 commercial establishments, the fire department has called for a review of fire safety measures at these places.

Chief fire officer Kiran Gawade said, “We have asked the commercial establishments to ensure that they have all the safety equipment required to protect their respective establishments. In case they don’t have the necessary equipment, they should ensure that they put them in place.”

Gawde said the PCMC will inspect commercial establishments for loopholes in the fire safety system. “We will ask them to meet the fire safety norms. If they don’t we will be forced to act against them,” he said.

He said installing fire safety equipment is not enough. “There should be trained manpower to handle the equipment,” he said.

Most fire accidents can be avoided if proper safety equipment and trained manpower is in place. “People in the establishments should not panic if there is a little spark. They should immediately douse the fire. Once a blaze grows it becomes difficult to control it even if you have trained manpower,” officials said.

Earlier, ward executive committees had been directly handling projects of sanitation, setting up and maintaining streetlights and maintenance of roads and parks. These were floated in January this year. Now, the administration has invited contractors to bid for these works for which tenders have been floated. While the bidding for sanitation closes on May 10, the same for streetlights ends on May 27. These tasks will be supervised by the executive officer of the Municipal Corporation and the chief sanitary officer. Independent contractors will handle other tasks such as checking stray cattle menace, maintenance and layout of roads, upkeep of parks and the like.

Deputy Commissioner Ashima Garg said: “They have come up with a plan to streamline civic projects by virtue of which they intend to rope in resident welfare associations (RWA) for sanitation and street lighting. If they are willing, then the RWAs will be preferred over contractors.”

The administration has divided the township into three zones to handle the task of street lighting. Meanwhile, each ward will have an independent contractor for sanitation. Sources also claim that the new arrangement will also see sectors 20 and 21, which were previously under the supervision of Haryana

Urban Development Authority, coming under civic body jurisdiction.

However, former councillors are skeptical about the new move. They feel ward executive committees were more efficient. “Work gets delayed and there is too much of bureaucratic interference in a contractual system. We have not rejected it outright, but hope that the arrangement works fine for the development of the wards,” said B B Singhal, a former councillor.