City corporation, RAJUK, and Fire Service have begun inspecting fire safety measures in the high rises of Dhaka.
On the first day of the special drive on Monday (Apr 1), the teams found faults in four out of five buildings inspected and all four had design flaws and failed to show proper fire extinguishing facilities.
Of the buildings, the 15-storey Prashad Trade Centre has fire hydrants just as show and RAJUK has decided to take measures against these buildings.
The building was completed last year and each floor has fire hydrant which has not been connected to the pump on the basement.
In addition, the emergency exit staircase is only thirty inches wide and there are no signs of directions to find the emergency exit.
RAJUK says, the stairs need to be 1.5 metres wide.
Inspection of Prashad Trade Centre did not find heat detectors, smoke detectors or fire alarms.
On Monday, a team from fire service went to the building and set a period of one month for all facilities to be upgraded.
Baridhara station senior officer, Mohamamd Abul Kalam Azad, said, “The building is still under construction and that’s why we gave them a month’s time to put all the fire safety facilities in place.”
The fire service team suggested placing of hydrants, sprinklers, smoke and heat detectors and alarms, emergency exits and keeping stairs to the roof accessible at all times.
Accepting the safety demands, the senior commercial manager of the building, Md Reazul Alam, said, “We have opened an LC to buy fire extinguishing materials and once they arrive, we will install them.”
ABC House in Kemal Ataturk Avenue is 13 storied though the plan says it’s a 12-storey building.
On the 13th floor is a restaurant called The Sky Room Dining. There are no stairs to the roof. Chief engineer of ABC real estate, Golam Mowla Khondokar, said, “I joined recently and am not aware of the problems but will soon take steps to rectify them.”
Star Tower is a sixteen storied building which houses Prime Asia University. Visiting the building, RAJUK chairman, Abdur Rahman, expressed astonishment to see a university in a commercial structure.
The MD of Star Tower is Badrul Alam and the director is DSCC mayor Sayeed Khokon.
However Sayeed Khokon denied having any ownership in the building.