According to reports, more than 50 per cent of hospitals and nursing homes in Mumbai do not meet requisite fire safety norms, putting the lives of patients and medical staff at risk.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) conducted a fire audit and it was found in this audit that as many as 701 hospitals, nursing homes and maternity homes among 1,324 facilities inspected do not comply with the Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures Act, 2006. Among them are 38 hospitals operated by the state government and BMC.
The details were disclosed by state urban development minister, Eknath Shinde, on Tuesday, March 2, in the state assembly in a written reply, adding that notices have been served to the hospital managements to check for lapses and to comply with the fire safety norms.
The question was jointly submitted by leaders like Atul Bhatkalkar, Abu Azmi, Yamini Jadhav, Devendra Fadnavis and several others to the urban development minister, seeking details of the fire audit post the Bhandara incident.
The fire safety audit was conducted in the backdrop of the Bhandara fire that broke out in a government hospital in January, killing ten infants. Taking cognizance of the incident, the chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had ordered a thorough investigation and directed to find out why the infants could not be saved at the time of the fire. He also ordered fire and structural audits of all the government hospitals across the state.
Even Shiv Sena legislator Sanjay Potnis among others appealed to the state government to carry out checks across Mumbai and quoted from an earlier compliance drive by the BMC that several hospitals flouted the fire safety norms.
Moreover, Ravi Raja, senior Congress corporator and Leader of Opposition also appealed to the civic body to look into this matter seriously as out of those 701 hospitals there are several hospitals run by BMC.
The govt's admitted in a state assembly, that over 700 hospitals were found flouting fire safety norms in their fire safety check drive which began in Jan. Out of these 700 hospitals few hospitals run by BMC. My appeal to @mybmc chief to look into this matter seriously.
— Ravi Raja INC (@ravirajaINC) March 3, 2021
The minister said that in Thane 347 hospitals were surveyed of which 28 were discovered to have shut down, 151 had submitted fire compliance while the remaining 168 had been given time till February 22 to submit the same. However, on being asked what action had been taken against relevant officials of the municipal corporations for negligence, they were greeted with silence.
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