GHMC asked to form special audit squads

Hyderabad: MA&UD Principal Secretary Arvind Kumar has directed the GHMC Commissioner to appoint special squads to conduct fire and safety audit of commercial buildings and complete the task in a month. He also asked the Commissioner to make a weekly assessment of the work carried out following which a comprehensive report to the government shall be submitted at the end of the month.

It may be recalled that during the recent inspections by the Principal Secretary in various locations in GHMC area, it was observed that there was a serious lacunae in the compliance to fire safety standards by diverse commercial buildings such as restaurants, hotels, hostels, hospitals, schools function halls and so on. It was felt that there was an urgent need for GHMC to get vulnerability analysis done of all densely populated, important and hazardous buildings in various locations in its jurisdiction, assess and fix the requirement of equipment and manpower so that any accidents are prevented and if they occur, are tackled promptly. 

A planned and determined move to ensure revamping of the fire services in these buildings is an urgent need, he added. Arvind Kumar said that the GHMC shall conduct an emergency fire and safety audit of commercial buildings in areas under its jurisdiction to examine whether these buildings have fire safety standards that has the capability to respond in a fire incident, whether they have proper fire exit mechanism in place and whether the fire safety equipment is maintained periodically.

He also said a comprehensive screening should be done in all cases, the vulnerable buildings need to be accounted for. He directed the GHMC officials to serve notices and initiate appropriate action and ensure that there was a complete stop of violations.