While the fire tragedy in Surat should have been a wakeup call, hundreds of coaching centre are running at Rourkela without fire safety measures and no objection certificate (NOC) from the Fire Services Department.
According to sources, there are over 130 coaching centres at Koel Nagar, Shakti Nagar, Chhend, Basanti Colony, Power House road, Civil township and also in some other lane at Rourkela.
According to educational building standard, before opening the coaching centre, the NOC has to be taken from the Fire Department. But many centres have been violating the law where hundreds of students are studying from morning to night hour every day.
The owner of the houses who have given their houses on rent to run the coaching centres have also violated law and have allowed tenants to run coaching centre without taking NOC.
According to sources, a team of Fire Department headed by Chief Fire Officer, Fire Prevention Wing, Cuttack had conducted raids in as many as 13 coaching centres in and around Rourkela about 15 days ago and had noticed the coaching centres being run without obtaining fire safety certificate (NOC) from the Fire Department and have not followed the procedure as per educational building standard to run the coaching centre.
The inspection team issued notices to the coaching centres to rectify the findings within one month time. Sources said more inspections will be done in the coming days in other coaching centres in and around Rourkela.
“We are trying to ensure that all the coaching centres in residential areas and commercial areas should run as per educational building standard and we are also checking whether they have obtained the fire safety certificate or not,” said B Singh, Deputy Fire Officer, Rourkela, adding, “We are also conducting awareness programmes to follow the necessary procedure, so that prevention can be done if fire catches any coaching centre.”