Hospitals, educational institutes lack fire safety

Adil Lateef
Srinagar, Dec 16: The hospitals and educational institutes of Kashmir are at extreme risk of blaze tragedies as they have not adopted fire safety precautions ever while the concerned authorities are in deep slumber and have not taken any step in this regard.
Official sources told Excelsior that majority of hospitals and educational institutes of Valley are staring at future disasters in absence of fire safety measures. “In fact, the apex institutes like Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital, the largest tertiary care hospital of Kashmir, also lacks safety measures in case of fire tragedies and no NOC was sought from the F&ES in new construction of this premier health institute”, they said.
Sources said that the medical authorities have not approached F&ES department ever to conduct safety audit of Government as well as private hospitals and are in deep slumber. “We were never approached by any hospital including apex hospitals of Kashmir for safety audit. All the Valley hospitals are at greater risk of fire tragedies. But, the authorities are showing no interest in fire safety and are putting lives of people at risk,” an official of F&ES department told Excelsior.
Besides the hospitals, the educational institutes of Valley including varsities also lack fire safety measures. In the early months of 2016, the F&ES department had started to issue NOCs to schools in Kashmir after conducting fire safety audit but due to non-cooperation by authorities, the process remained incomplete, the sources revealed. The total number of educational institutions in the school education sector in Kashmir division is of the order of 11633, consisting 2876 EGS centers, 5547 primary schools, 2379 middle schools, 525 high schools and 248 higher secondary schools.
In addition, there are 2269 private schools out of which 1175 are primary schools, 810 middle schools, 247 high schools and 37 higher secondary schools. “Only 10-20 percent of schools cooperated with us. Rest, no one came forward. The main reason is insensitiveness of the authorities and they are not ready to spent money on safety measures. There was non-cooperation from authorities concerned,” the F&ES official said, adding that the higher education institutes including varsities of the Valley also lack fire safety measures.
Citing yesterday’s blaze incident at Nowgam campus of Central University of Kashmir (CUK) here as an example, the F&ES official said: “If the varsity authorities had gone through safety measures, then a department like Convergent Journalism should have been ideally in ground floor because it has electronic equipments but the reality is that no clearance was sought from us and thus a major tragedy could have taken place”.
Sources in F&ES department said that the authorities are adopting “casual approach” vis-à-vis fire safety measures and do not show any “sensitivity” in dealing with the matter. “Need of the hour is to revisit to assess the vulnerability to fire or alike incidents to these health and educational institutes. A proper plan is to be formulated wherein we have to chalk out the strategy of evacuation, rescue et al. But concerned authorities must cooperate and show sensitiveness in this regard,” they added.

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