Mumbai: Fire officials may inspect restaurants, hotels at night

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Restaurants and hotels are now likely to be inspected even in the nights, as the fire cell is likely to work even beyond sunset. The fire act prevents the fire officers to carry out inspection drives in late evenings and in the night time and as most of the illegal activities such as running Hookah parlours takes place in the night time, the civic body is likely to make necessary changes to the act.

Following the Kamala Mills tragic fire where 14 people lost their lives, civic chief had instructed the officials to form dedicated cells for the inspection of all the commercial places in the city, on war footing. While taking its review, on Saturday, civic chief Ajoy Mehta was informed by the fire officials about technical problems in the system itself such as inspecting from sunrise to sunset.

It was after this, Mehta instructed additional municipal commissioner Idzes Kundan to identify these technical and legal hurdles and also act on it accordingly, so that the fire officers along with its team members can carry out the necessary inspections throughout the evening. The Kamala Mills fire tragedy has brought to light the lethargic attitude of the civic officials and the civic chief wants to ensure that such incident doesn't take place again.

While the civic body has no right to take action in case of illegalities found such as restaurant serving Hookah inside it, the civic body aims at bringing it on record and ask the police to act accordingly. A senior civic official from the Commissioner's office, said, "Civic chief was keen to start the inspection drive even during the night time for which he has asked AMC to clear the hassles associated with such working."

Further, Mehta in his review meeting has also instructed the fire officials to issue notices and take serious action against those not following fire safety norms.

Also Read: Kamala Mills Fire: BMC Writes To State Government To Regulate Interior Designer's Work

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