The negligence of government authorities and their lack of coordination were exposed once again as a devastating fire in an eight-storey building in Dhaka’s popular hangout place, Bailey Road, killed at least 46 people on Thursday night.
The building owners and businesses continued to operate without having any fire safety plan or permission from the city development authorities, while the city authorities were accused of providing trade licences to the businesses without checking their land use and fire safety criteria.
Experts blamed Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha, Dhaka South City Corporation, and Fire Service and Civil Defence primarily for the fire incident that razed the building housing several restaurants, clothing and mobile phone shops, and residential apartments, among others, for two hours between 9:50pm and 11:50pm.
Deviation from the Bangladesh National Building Code while constructing the building, ignoring the approved design, setting up restaurants on floors approved for only offices, and a lack of action despite a clear violation of fire safety rules were among the few things that were exposed following the tragedy.
After visiting the affected building on Friday, Dhaka South City mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh said that the Bangladesh National Building Code was completely violated during the construction of the building.
Referring to the BNBC code, Taposh said that any building with more than five floors required at least two stairs to tackle an emergency, but the Green Cozy Cottage only had one, and that too was very narrow.
He observed that the only stair in the building was also occupied by gas cylinders and other goods.
‘People could not escape the fire using this stair,’ he said.
The Rajuk member for development control, Tonmoy Das, told New Age that approval of the building was given for mixed commercial and residential use.
‘But commercial means office, not restaurant, where fire incidents can occur,’ he said.
The building owners changed its nature of use without obtaining permission from Rajuk, said Tonmoy, adding that the existing structure required two stairs.
According to Tonmoy, the design of the building was approved in 2011 and completed in 2013.
Bangladesh Institute of Planners president Adil Mohammed Khan told New Age that Rajuk, being an enforcement authority, could not avoid its responsibility to check the deviation from its approval of the building.
‘It is a classic example of governance failure,’ he added.
On September 5, 2023, the Fire Service and Civil Defence served notice to the building owners as they observed that the building had no fire safety plan and was unsafe.
The fire service authorities, however, did not take any action later.
The Fire Service director for operations and maintenance, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Tajul Islam Chowdhury, said that the building owners had not applied for a fire safety plan.
‘We hardly file any cases against those who do not obey the rules. Our officials are discouraged from filing cases as they don’t get any allowance from the government to attend a trial after being transferred from the corresponding station,’ he said.
He said that they served the building owners with three show-cause notices.
‘We can conduct mobile courts only on rare occasions, as we do not have any executive magistrates,’ he said.
Urban planner Adil, also a teacher at Jahangirnagar University, said that fire service authorities could not avoid their responsibility by showing excuses for lacking manpower.
‘People are continuing to lose their lives in such fire incidents,’ he observed.
Urban planner Iqbal Habib said that it was nothing but a failure of the government agencies concerned and a lack of coordination among them.
‘Rajuk, the Fire Service, and the City Corporation cannot avoid responsibility. Rajuk had to ensure that the approved plan was followed, while the Fire Service should not have allowed running restaurant businesses in a building lacking fire safety,’ Iqbal said.
He said that the city authorities’ issuance of trade licences to restaurants and collecting taxes from them without checking the building use plan was unacceptable.
DSCC spokesperson and public relations officer Abu Nasher claimed that Rajuk never shared its building use plan with the city corporation.
‘We issued trade licences, checking whether the businesses were valid,’ he added.-New Age
