The State Crisis Group on Tuesday focused on measures to be taken for prevention of industrial hazards.
Reviewing the actions taken so far in this direction, Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi directed the industrial units to shift the hazardous units, chemical and gas storages etc from heavily populated areas and close vicinity of the towns and reset those in safe distant locations.
The respective hazardous companies were also told that enforcement measures would be stringent against them in case of their failure to shift the hazardous units to safe locations within specified time period. The companies dealing with explosives and hazardous chemicals were asked to have their internal mechanism and SOP ready for prevention of any crisis and immediately respond to any emergency situation.
The Chief Secretary further asked them to conduct regular emergency drills to keep all their safety measures and mechanism in all readiness to respond. He directed the Collector, Jagatsinghpur, to take a meeting of all stakeholders and chalk out a detailed work plan to deal with any oil spill disaster in future.
Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan advised the companies to have a detail SOP for coordination with district administration, ODRAF units, fire stations and rapid action teams who would come to their immediate rescue.
Principal Secretary labour and ESI G Srinivas presented the updates and outlined the issues for discussion. He informed that around 34 such compliances were ensured during 2016.
It was decided in the meetings that the companies would put in the internal surveillance system to have regular safety audit to identify potential threats before they have any impact on the safety.
The field functionaries of the Directorate of Factories and Boilers were directed to enforce compliance to the measures suggested through safety audits.
The issues relating to hazard identification, risk management, preparation of on-site and off-site emergency plan, acquiring emergency management infrastructure, training of personnel and stakeholders and organisation of mock drills were discussed at the meeting, said sources. The meeting also decided to intensify awareness generating activities prevention of industrial hazards through seminars, conferences and meetings at local levels.
Notably, at present there are 4,025 registered factories, 2,277 registered boilers and 4, 90,227 licenced people dealing with hazardous materials operating in the State.
Around 13 districts have major accident hazardous factories and about 168 accident prone factories have been identified. Principal Secretary Industry Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary Home Asit Kumar Tripathy, Principal Secretary Forest and Environment Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, Secretary Health and Family Welfare Pramod Meherda , labor Commissioner Roopa Mishra along with other senior officers from various industries and the concerned departments participated in the deliberations.