Flaunted as an ideal investment destination, Gujarat recorded 421 deaths of workers in industrial accidents as owners flout safety norms with impunity.
This gory fact has been recorded in a report compiled following a survey conducted by an NGO Aajeevika Bureau.
A study only on fire hazards in the industrial areas found that mandatory safety equipment are either missing or, if installed, have not been serviced to keep them functional.
Serious violations of the Factories Act, 1948 and Gujarat Factories Rule, 1963 have be detected in a survey of Narol textile hub in the southern suburbs of Ahmedabad, Subham Kaushal, a lawyer and researcher with the Aajeevika Bureau, disclosed.
More than 90 workers interviewed during the survey said they never received any training to operate the fire extinguishers, he informed. Other workers said that fire extinguishers are not serviced and tested routinely.
The problem of factory owners flouting all norms has aggravated ever since the inspection process was made online in 2015 as part of promoting ‘Ease of doing business’ under which they just have to fill up some forms to self-certify the installation of safety systems, Subham Kaushal told The Statesman.
The fire safety norms prescribe only the installation of fire extinguishers and exit gates, but do not check any other circumstantial hazards the workers are exposed to, he said.
Inflammable fabric dust strewn around, chemical drums blocking the escape route, exit corridor stashed with raw materials, open switchboards and parked trucks blocking gates are some of the other hazards which endanger the lives of workers in the industrial units here, the study pointed out.
The study team could meet only a fraction of the workforce as 96 per cent of them are engaged on contract and, thus, officially do not exist on rolls of these industrial units.