Inspection team finds fire safety lapses at coachings in Bhopal

BHOPAL: The Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) inspection team on Monday found several lapses in safety measures at city coaching institutes.
Officials said, May 28 has been set as the deadline for the centres to ensure that the fire safety guidelines are being followed. District administration is expected to start taking action against the institutes that fail to follow the guidelines after Tuesday.
After the Surat fire tragedy at a commercial complex that killed over 20 students, Bhopal commissioner, Kalpana Shrivastava had formed four committees for inspection in different locations — MP Nagar Zone I and II, Indrapuri-Sonagri and Ashoka Garden — where there are a large number of coaching institutes in place.
Each team, with four members, started visiting the coaching centres to take a stock of their preparedness for a fire accident.
Officials said, several coaching centres were operating without having installed the basic fire safety equipment. “There is a need to make things better. Such is the situation that four-five coaching centres have the entry way from one narrow stairwell. What will happen if an accident takes place?,” said a student, Vijay Sharma.
Take the example of MP Nagar Zone-II — city’s coaching hub. The area is sitting on a ticking fire bomb. Around 10,000 students, who come here daily to attend the classes, are at a risk of a Surat-kind of inferno, admit officials.
Most of the 50 big and small coaching classes that operate here are cramped, don’t have proper entry and exit gates and even lack firefighting equipment especially extinguishers. The worse part? Some even don’t have required the permissions from the departments to run classes.
Students here are a worried lot as they feel conditions prevailing in these institutes make them vulnerable to incidents like one that happened in Surat on May 24.
The situation can turn worse as in majority of buildings, gates leading to terraces are kept locked, making it impossible for anyone to reach the top in case of any emergency. “They keep gates that lead to top floors locked. In such a situation, one can well imagine what will happen if Surat like incident takes place. Authorities must take note of this. As for us, we have no choice except to attend classes as it is a matter of our future,” Ankit Sharma, a student said.