Announcing the new fire safety rules for the municipal areas in Tripura, the state Fire and Emergency Services directorate Friday said a new and more efficient system has been put in place which would provide fire safety clearances for buildings below the height of 15 meters, unlike the national building rules and fire safety norms which are for buildings above 15 metre.
Speaking to reporters at the state secretariat in the evening, secretary for fire and emergency services Apurba Roy said the new system will allow city dwellers to apply online and obtain fire safety permissions without any hassle within 28 days.
“The fire safety rules in the previous system were insufficient. We received a draft bill from the central government. We have formulated The Tripura Fire and Emergency Service Act, 2022. The main objective of this Act is to provide No Objection Certificates (NOC) to residential houses and commercial buildings through the online mode without any hassle,” the official said.
The Act was passed in the recent session of the state Assembly, the law department notified it in the state gazette on April 27.
Fire and emergency services director AK Bhattacharya said the existing fire and safety rules for residential houses and commercial buildings were insufficient.
He said the National Building Code was followed in formulating the new rules and said while fire NOC is mandatory for buildings above 15 meter height nationally, the new rules ropes in buildings below 15 meters in Tripura as well.
“One can apply for a fire NOC, upload data and obtain the NOC within 28 days, if all documents are okay. If there’s anything wrong with the documents, it’ll be communicated in the same timeframe,” he said.
He also said that the new rules would also make way for community awareness programs in villages involving civil defense volunteers, ham radio license holders, disaster management volunteers, women Self Help Group members among others.
Tripura has already trained over 1,000 civil defense volunteers while the training for 2,000 others is underway. As many as 75 ham radio operators were also trained in the meantime.
The official said the fire and emergency service centers in the state receive 12 calls per day on an average, among which three are on fire incidents and the rest are on other sorts of emergencies like road accidents, natural calamities etc.
“We operate the fire and emergency services. We are called for help in any emergency situation. But we receive three calls a day on an average on fire. We feel these incidents have come down from before, since we are spreading awareness among schools, colleges and among the society on tackling fire incidents,” he said.
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