Amid Kolkata hotel fire, mushrooming lodges in 3 other locations now under scanner

Kolkata, Aug 22 (IANS) Amid the fire incident at a hotel building on Mirza Ghalib Street on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, killing nine persons, the state fire services department is now bringing under the scanner not only the hotels, lodges and guesthouses in and around that particular area, but also similar mushrooming entities at three other important locations in the city.

The state fire services department had witnessed hotels, lodges and guesthouses mushrooming in a similar manner in these three other locations, namely East Metropolitan Bypass, Sealdah Station and Howrah Station.

“After the fire incident at Mirza Ghalib Street, our officials have received several complaints from the local residents from these three areas about several hotels, lodges and guesthouses operating similarly without maintaining the minimum fire safety norms. We are taking such complaints quite seriously and will conduct inspections of such entities in these three areas,” said a state fire services department official.

These locations are strategically important. The locations near Sealdah and Howrah Stations, being two important entry and exit routes from Kolkata, people coming from outside often prefer low-budget hotels close to the two stations, and that is where the hotel and guest house owners often operate their entities in these two areas, often without maintaining the minimum fire safety measures, as was exactly witnessed in the case of Mirza Ghalib Hotel.

On the other hand, the state fire services department, the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, is too strategically important for a different reason.

“Several major private hospitals have come up during the last few years which are adjacent to the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, catering to patients not only from the city but also from other states and even from neighbouring Bangladesh. Often, the family members of such patients prefer staying at accommodations closer to such hospitals. Now viewing this as an opportunity for lucrative business, hotels, lodges and guesthouses have mushroomed in the area adjacent to such hospitals, and there are several complaints against their owners also of running such entities without maintaining fire safety norms,” the state fire services department official said.

There are some other complaints against such mushrooming hotels, lodges and guesthouses that have mushroomed near the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass area in the last few years. The first complaint is that often such entities have been set up by illegally converting residential buildings into commercial entities without taking the necessary permission for that.

Secondly, often these entities are located within such narrow lanes with extremely narrow approach-ways that make it virtually impossible for the fire tenders to reach those buildings in case of any fire.

Finally, there are several complaints from the local residents that often many of these hotels, lodges and guesthouses are being used for other shady activities,

Already, the state fire services department had slapped show-cause notices on 26 hotel entities in and around the Mirza Ghalib Street area. The department had also slapped closure notices on 11 other entities.

–IANS

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