Few industries, shopping centers and businesses concerns are following the relevant safety laws and have fire exits. The increasing fire incidents especially in the industrial areas are attributed to the non-observance of the safety laws.
"Most of our shopping centers, industries and markets have no safety mechanism, which should be reviewed seriously by the concerned authorities, otherwise it could cause grave tragedies in future," an official of industrial department said while commenting on the recent fire indicants in industrial and commercial areas of the city.
Fire incidents in factories have become common occurrence and it is well established that the incidents happen because of poor arrangement of fire fighting and no training to workers for using these equipment when fire incident occur. In developed countries, fire exits and fire extinguishers are considered of utmost importance in all houses, workplaces and industrial units.
It is the government's responsibility to ensure that fire exits and proper fire-fighting equipment are provided at schools, offices, factories, shopping centers, cinemas, etc. If these precautionary measures are not taken urgently, the horrible events cannot be avoided in future where precious lives of poor workers are lost. The trade and industry has expressed its sheer concern over the ever-increasing incidents of fire in Karachi particularly in the industrial areas.
They says that the government departments responsible for the safety and welfare and if there is any indication of negligence the department heads must be prosecuted. These departments have been created for a specific purpose, to ensure safety of the workers, instead they appear more concerned with feathering their own nests. There are a total of 19 government departments responsible for ensuring implementation of labour laws. None of the departments ever wrote a report after 'inspecting' these factories for hygiene and safety conditions.
Chief Patron Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) S. M. Muneer, Chairman, Mohammad Zubair Chhaya, President All Karachi Industrial Alliance, Mian Zahid Hussain, and Vice Chairmen Niaz Ahmed and Najmul Arfeen have showed their dismay over the five incidents of fire in just one day in Karachi on Tuesday including one in a factory wherein the factory was gutted due to the delay in fire fighting by the fire brigade.
KATI chief said that the fire fighting system in Karachi has become outdated due to which fire brigade department is unable to extinguish fire effectively and timely. He said that even water is not available to the fire tenders easily and conveniently. They demanded of the government to revamp fire brigade department in Karachi and import new and modern fire tenders for the city.
They further demanded to bring in more snorkels for rescue work as the largest city of the country has not enough snorkels to cope with the situation. They also demanded a judicial probe into the fire incidents in the city in order to ascertain whether or not the fire incidents are the consequence of any act of sabotage.