Kakinada, Mar 11th: Failing to take effective and preventive measures to eliminate the fire hazards and gas leakages in the industries, many fire mishaps are occurring in the industrial companies making hundreds of people hospitalized and few of them loosing their lives. To keep a check on these incidents and to make the industrial management to establish the fire control mechanism a meet was organized by the district collector, Mr. Gopala Krishna Dwevedi and the superintendent of police, Mr. Y. Nagi Reddy with the heads of the industries, pollution control board, fire and police officials.

Speaking on the occasion, collector said that he was informed by the fire officials that mishap at industries occurs largely due to failure of either staff or fire controlling mechanism. He said that except Reliance industries, no industry in the district is effectively maintaining the fire controlling mechanisms. In a survey it is revealed that in the district nearly 500 small and medium industries are located out of which forty to fifty of them were identified as hazardous.

The collector formed an emergency response committee (ERC) and appointed the deputy inspector of factories as its president. According to this committee, the ERC president will meet the safety officers of industries every three months and ensure that all the precautionary measures are followed as per the rules. Some of the ERC member will also be sent to Mumbai to participate in a training to be conducted by the Atomic Energy Organization.