ISLAMABAD-As many as, 96 percent of the occupancies have failed the inspection for fire audit conducted by the Building Safety Division of Metropolitan Corporation of Islamabad (MCI), said a report issued by the department in September. 5,339 occupancies were inspected out of which 136 (2.5%) occupancies were issued fire safety plan approval, 22 (0.41%) were issued fire safety completion, five (0.09%) were issued provisional fire safety completion and five (0.09%) occupancies are in completion process for plan approvals. Challans worth of Rs38.695 million were recovered and challans worth Rs22.698 million were pending. 5171 occupancies in the capital were served notices and asked to complete trainings for the issuance of fire safety plan approval.
The occupancies which were denied the licenses consist of industrial zone, commercial buildings, residential occupancies and some of the government buildings. These official numbers must raise eyebrows in the wake of recent fire incident at Centaurus, one of the flagship buildings of Islamabad. According to Ammad ud Din Muhammad AD Building Safety Division MCI, his department has been issuing notices to Centaurus since 2011. Their consultants have been responding to the department but haven’t showed any major effort to pursue the required licensing from the department.
Centaurus had fire equipment but did not have competent staff to operate that equipment. The alleged restaurant where fire started was on the extension area of the food court which wasn’t approved from the Building Control Directorate of Capital Development Authority (CDA). Centaurus doesn’t even have building completion certificate from CDA. Centaurus was opened for public in 2013. Another major issue which prevented Centaurus from getting the fire safety license was that fire alarms at the shops were not connected to the central fire alarm system of the mall, which means if the fire breaks out at some random shop, central alarm system won’t even know that there’s a fire in the building.
Emergency exits at the shopping mall were allegedly obstructed and were being used as the storage place for some shops. The videos which came out from the mall also showed people had panicked and were running around the escalators to get out of the shopping mall.
One of the notices issued by the department dated 08-12-2020 to Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, owner of the mall (now Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir) stated, “The state of preparedness in case of natural and/ or man-made disasters can be fatal in the absence of “mitigation-plan,” which is required to be addressed under the prevailing regulations assigning “Top Most Priority.” Please note that shop, appartment, food-court safety is another missing ingredient, to be enforced in each unit(s), side by side with the building’s safety protocols, as a standard requirement.” According to Ammad ud Din no action was taken on all the notices which were sent to the owner, their consultant just kept feeding the papers.
Criminal negligence was showed on the behalf of Centaurus management which could’ve caused a lot more damage on the fire incident last Sunday.CDA Chairman and Chief Commissioner Islamabad Capt. (Retd) Mohammad Usman Younis has said in a statement on October 9th, 2022 that fire at Centaurus was controlled after two hours and he thanked Fire Brigade, Pakistan Navy, Pakistan Air Force and Rescue 1122. DC Islamabad Irfan Nawaz Memon said in a statement October 9th, 2022 that “District Administration is thankful to MCI, CDA, Rescue 1122 Rawalpindi and teams of Armed forces for timely responding to the fire which erupted in Centaurus Mall Islamabad today.”
Inquiry committee was also formed on that day to probe the Centaurus incident and present the findings within three days. Office of DC Islamabad said in a statement on 12-10-2022, “All the buildings in Islamabad which have been audited and notices have been issued should be re-evaluated. He also gave instructions to Directorate of Emergency Disaster and Management to take strict action against the buildings in which fire protection devices are not complete.”
Syed Muhammad Kashif, Director MCI after meeting with DC Islamabad Irfan Nawaz Memon on October 13th, 2022 issued a press release in which department has been ordered to penalize nine buildings with a fine of Rs500,000 each. MCI has also asked district management to provide help of magistrate and Islamabad Police to seal 15 buildings in the capital. DC Islamabad has also ordered to audit more buildings including government buildings. It is pertinent to mention here that in recent history of the city, this is the second time authorities seem to be doing their job post-disaster. Last time the city saw these sort of audits and re-evaluations being made against the occupancies which lacked licensing and approvals was after October 8th, 2005 earthquake in which a block of 12-storey building of Margalla Towers collapsed.
–The writer is a freelance
contributor.