After getting slammed by the court, the civic body served notice to around 1,100 buildings to get a valid fire NoC.
According to the official website of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), 359 high-rise buildings in the city are without fire NoC (No Objection Certificate).
This despite several fire incidents that have occurred in the city. It must be noted that it was only after the high court's order that the civic body began taking sincere efforts like a periodic drive to seal units that were operating without fire safety.
After getting slammed by the court, the civic body served notice to around 1,100 buildings to get a valid fire NoC. In 2016, the AMC cracked down its whip on the violators of fire safety, and has served notices and sealed the units that ignored the notices. However, there are still 359 units in the city which don't have a valid fire NOC.
Municipal commissioner Vijay Nehra said the fire department is going its job. "Getting license doesn't mean that everything is fine. In one of the last incidents, despite having a license, the system was not working. The department is also running with a short staff, gradually we will put in place."
"When we took up the drive at the time, we first sealed the commercial units. Now, there are residential and residential cum commercial units around 300 who have not yet got fire safety clearance form fire department," said a senior fire officer.
The chief fire officer said, "In the second stage, we will start action against the commercial cum residential units and last will come residential. This is how we are functioning. On Monday's incident, we took much time to find out the root cause of the fire from fume. After a long time, we come to know about the tyre stock in the basement which was the main reason," said MS Dastoor.
The fire department said that sealing of the unit doesn't fall under their ambit and that they can only issue safety license which is valid for one year. It is the job of the estate department to inform the fire department about violators, while on the other hand, the fire department says they can only issue a license after inspection informed by the estate department.
Meanwhile, the civic body had said that they will aware people regarding fire safety. But nothing so far has been done in this matter. Standing committee chairman Amul Bhatt was busy when approached for a comment.
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