The corporators slammed the civic administration for not being able to present the report of the Dreams Mall fire incident at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) standing committee meeting on Wednesday.
On March 26, a massive fire broke out at Dreams Mall in Bhandup that claimed lives of nine patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment in Sunrise Hospital, located in the third floor of the mall. The BMC administration had ordered a probe into the incident on March 27 and appointed Prabhat Rahangdale, Deputy Municipal Commissioner and former Chief Fire Officer (CFO), for leading the probe. The panel was given a 15-day deadline for submitting the report. On April 27, FPJ had reported that it’s now been more than a month and the probing panel is yet to submit its report.
Every month a record of fire incidents that has taken place in past one month is being tabled during one of the committee meetings. On Wednesday the same was tabled and the investigation report was not there. Pointing out this issue, Ravi Raja, senior Congress corporator and leader of opposition (LoP) in the BMC, questioned the administration for the delay.
“There have been fire incidents in Vasai-Virar and the police over there have already made arrests and here we don’t know anything about how much the investigation has progressed,” Raja told FPJ post meeting.
“So many people have died in the incident, in such situation the administration should act immediately and here more than a month has passed and we are yet to get the first report,” he added.
Rakhee Jadhav, senior corporator of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) questioned the authenticity of the ongoing investigation.
“The investigation is being led by the same officer who was responsible in giving out fire NOC to the hospital administration last year, the body must have had appointed someone else to carry out the probe,” said Jadhav.
Prabhakar Shinde, senior corporator of BJP, raised a point of information during the meeting seeking details of 227 vaccination centres that the civic body has said that it will set up.
“Every corporator has suggested a potential location for setting up a vaccination booth, but we have no clarity on when the booths will start functioning. So many people stand outside the booths every day and due to shortage of vaccines many of the active booths remains closed,” Shinde said.
Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, who was present during the meeting said that the booths will be started in a phased manner once adequate vaccine stock is available.
“The state is working to prepare its own global tender for acquiring its own vaccines, there will be adequate supply soon and hopefully things will improve after May 20,” said Kakani during the meeting.
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