500 buildings in city don't have Fire Dept approval

At least five hundred high-rise buildings of the capital do not have any approval from the fire department, said officials of Fire Service and Civil Defence Directorate yesterday.
Fire service Director General Abu Nayeem Md Shahidullah at a workshop at the city's CIRDAP auditorium said enforcement of the fire prevention law is very weak in the country. Housing and Building Research Institute organised the workshop on a draft survey report on fire fighting system at high-rises in Dhaka.
The fire service has so far given approval for 1704 high-rises, said Nayeem. But there are 2200 high-rises according to a survey conducted by Centre for Urban Studies (CUS).
The directorate got the authority to operate mobile courts in February, and it has given punishment to 33 violators in Dhaka, Chittagong, Narayanganj and Gazipur in the last one month.
"We are planning to conduct mobile courts at the district level also," said Nayeem.
Out of around 12,000 fire incidents in the country last year, 3500 occurred in Dhaka itself, he said.
During the survey, around 105 high-rises (seven-storey and above as per the fire prevention act) of the capital were picked randomly from residential and commercial areas, and most of them lack even basic facilities for fire fighting including hose pipes, reserved water, smoke and heat detectors, fire exits, fireproof doors, adequate water pumps and power generators.