No headway in hiring boiler inspectors
The government has apparently been negligent in recruiting people to inspect boilers at several thousand factories despite repeated incidents that killed dozens of poor workers.
Though it sounds surprising, the Office of the Chief Inspector of Boiler has been running for years with only five inspectors and is responsible for inspecting more than 5,500 approved boilers across the country.
The understaffed office could not recruit nearly 100 inspectors even in one and a half years due to delay on the part of the public administration and industries ministries.
The boiler office sent a proposal to the industries ministry in March last year seeking permission to recruit nearly 100 inspectors.
The ministry forwarded the proposal to the public administration ministry for approval to hire 71 inspectors.
The public administration ministry did not act on the proposal promptly. Rather, it sent back the proposal to the chief boiler inspector this week along with some queries.
Chief Boiler Inspector Mohammad Abdul Mannan said he would send a fresh proposal to the public administration ministry very soon to recruit the inspectors.
The total number of staff at the boiler office is eight, including five inspectors that also include Mannan.
Only five inspectors are responsible to inspect more than 5,500 boilers in the country, he said.
“The number of inspectors is inadequate. It is almost impossible to inspect all boilers going door to door. In an ideal situation, we need more than 100 inspectors to check the existing number of boilers,” he said.
The chief inspector added the office needs a lot of experts as local entrepreneurs have started to manufacture boilers since 2007.
Until then, only the imported boilers were approved at industrial units. The boiler office allows production and marketing of locally made boilers.
“So, experts are very much needed to examine the quality of locally made boilers,” Mannan said.
A third of the registered boilers are made locally and the rest is imported, mainly from Germany and China, according to Mannan.
He said an inspector examines 15 to 20 boilers in an area a day and issues certificates.
Out of 5,500 registered boilers, more than 3,000 are in the garment and textile sectors.
Boilers made headlines again on Monday when one at Multifabs Ltd exploded killing at least 13 people.
The boiler was inspected in June last year and another inspection was due this week, said Mannan. Before Monday's incident, at least 17 lives were lost in three incidents of boiler blasts alone this year. Thirteen of them died in a single incident in Dinajpur in April.
Besides, 41 workers were killed in a devastating fire at Tampaco Foils Ltd at Tongi in Gazipur in September last year. The fire originated from a boiler explosion.
The boiler explosion at Multifabs, a garment factory in Gazipur, was caused for high pressure of gas and errors in operations, according to Mannan.
The boiler at Multifabs was set up in 2005 but it was not replaced although the officials from the Department of Boiler inspected it every year, said Mahiuddin Faruqui, chairman and managing director of the garment company.
Faruqui said he did not feel the urgency of replacing the old boiler as the lifespan of such equipment is more than 25 years. Multifabs purchased the boiler from a German company.
Faruqui said his factory was certified by the Accord, the inspection, remediation and monitoring agency of more than 200 European retailers and brands, in January this year.
“Multifabs Ltd is an Accord-covered factory. It was initially inspected for fire safety on April 9, 2014,” said Rob Wayss, executive director and acting chief safety inspector of the Accord in an email to The Daily Star on Tuesday.
He said, “On the day of the boiler explosion, 77 percent of the required fire safety remediation items had been verified by the Accord as completed, and 82 percent of the overall remediation items had been verified as completed.”
He said the factory had completed boiler related remediation and this was verified by Accord in 2016.
Wayss also said from the Accord fire safety inspection, boiler rooms at the factory need to be fire separated.
“Please note that the fire separation is to contain a fire in the event one occurs in the room the boiler is located. A fire separation (construction to contain fires with fully protected and sealed openings) does not address the issue of a boiler explosion,” Wayss said. He said the Accord would continue to work with Multifabs and the signatories to fully remediate the factory's facility. After the incident on Monday, the owners of Multifabs announced the closure of the factory for an indefinite period. Some 6,000 workers were employed at the factory.
Multifabs, set up in 1992, exports mainly knit items worth $70 million a year. German's Aldi is the main customer of the exporter, Faruqui said.
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