Times of India: Ahmedabad: Friday,
07 August 2020.
In what
is an appalling state of fire safety, only 91 of the 2,022 hospitals and
clinics of the city have renewed their fire safety audits and secured a
no-objection certificates (NOCs), said senior officials of the AMC. The
flagrant violation of safety rules is not confined only to private
establishments, but a number of public hospitals and health centres also have
not renewed their fire NOCs.
Shrey
Hospital, where a fire claimed the lives of eight patients in the early hours
of Thursday, had also not renewed its fire NOC.
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Officials
of the civic body said the issue of fire safety at hospitals and clinics of the
city came up for discussion at a high-level meeting held after the Shrey
Hospital tragedy. “Officials were told that of the 2,022 hospitals and clinics
in Ahmedabad, only 91 had renewed their fire safety certification from the
civic body,” said an AMC official.
Officials
of the civic body, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the onus
of securing an NOC from the fire department is on the hospitals and clinics, it
is the duty of the civic body to issue notices to hospitals that have not
renewed their fire safety NOC. “While hospitals and clinics have thrown caution
to the wind and the violated rules by not getting their NOCs renewed, the civic
body has not issued notices to any of the erring hospitals either,” an official
said.
The
civic body is supposed to issue notices to all establishments hospitals and
clinics included about the new guidelines that have been announced after the
Surat tuition class fire tragedy, listing safety precautions and equipment.
“The civic body has not issued any such notices to establishments, including
hospitals and clinics,” the official said.
According
to an RTI petition filed with the AMC, there are 985 registered hospitals in
the city with 12,978 beds cumulatively and only 5% of these had bothered to
renew their fire NOCs.
After
the Shrey hospital fire, fire brigade personnel began checking Covid-19
designated hospitals in the city. “We checked 31 hospitals and found that many
of them did not either have fire safety documents or their staff members were
not aware of how to use extinguishers,” said a fire officer.
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