Two buildings, one located at Patto and the other in the heart of capital city, houses almost all the major government departments right from transport, panchayat, forest, women commission, civil supplies, registrar, children’s court, tribal, employment exchange, urban development, Aadhar registration, etc. Unfortunately, these two buildings lack fire safety.
The old structured building, whose maintenance itself is in very bad phase, is visited by thousands of people every day for various purposes. Though both the buildings have the fire safety system in place the maintenance has not been carried out for years together and hence the equipments are non-functional.
There have been several incidences in the past wherein the visitors have got stuck inside the elevators due to sudden breakdown, thus exposing the safety lapses on part of authorities and to fix the problem permanently.In Junta House, one can see the electric wires hanging thus risking lives of visitors as well as office goers and also in any emergency there is no emergency exit, as these exist points are turned into store rooms.
As far as Shram Shakti Bhavan is concerned, the biggest worry is that there is no free access for the fire tenders to reach the pump house which is behind the building. The free passage has been occupied by the vehicles which are parked inside.
Panjim Municipal Market
If one remembers, in December 2014, 38 open stalls went up in flames after a massive fire broke out at the Municipal Market in the early hours. Fortunately, no casualties were reported. Three years down the line, the City Corporation of Panaji, seems to have learnt no lesson, as the market complex continues to lack on fire safety measures.
The complex is one of the busiest places, where you find consumers early morning at 7 am till night 10 pm. The vast complex with ground plus first floor is occupied by over 400 vendors selling their items. But it appears that the CCP is playing with the lives of shoppers and traders by neglecting the non-functional fire system, as the market is unprepared to tackle a fire breakout, if any. A visit to the market revealed that the fire hydrants installed at strategic points in 2003 have been non-functional and their landing valves are missing. Most of the brass couplings used to fix water pipe to the hydrants are also missing. There are no fire extinguishers in the complex. The glasses of the fire hose cabinets are broken. Besides, no fire sprinklers and alarm system are in operation.
