BHUBANESWAR: The State has recorded substantial decrease of fatal chemical accidents in hazardous industries during the last 10 years.
“A consistently declining trend has been noticed in industrial deaths. From 121 deaths in 2010 to 78 in 2012 and 31 till date in the current year, there has been a dip,” said Labour Commissioner-cum-Director Boiler and Factories Niranjan Sahu after a high-level meeting.
This was revealed at the State Crisis Management Group meeting held under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy here on Wednesday.
Tripathy directed the department to sharpen preventive enforcement and response mechanism through close monitoring and team operation. Sahu said there are 4,490 factories and 2,497 boilers in the State. Out of these, 35 factories are major accident-prone factories. Around 545 factories also have hazardous practices in their process of production. The chemical accidents generally occur because of fire, explosion and toxic release, he said.
The Chief Secretary directed all major accident hazardous (MAH) factories to update their standard operating procedure as per changing condition of the machineries and production process.
The Directorate was asked to enforce standard maintenance procedure in all MAH industries by undertaking at least two visits in a year.
Tripathy also directed for frequent meetings of district crisis groups (DCGs) and take stock of the preventive as well as awareness measures taken through active involvement of local crisis groups (LCGs). Presently, 29 DCGs and 15 LCGs are operating in the State.
An emergency response centre would be set up in Directorate of Fire Services for immediate team response at the time of crisis while Rourkela Steel Plant and IOCL were asked to have specially designed HAZCHEM vehicles in their respective areas. IOCL was also advised to put another emergency response vehicle in Khurda in addition to those in Balasore and Paradip.
Principal Secretary Labour, Employment and ESI Anu Garg; Industries Secretary Hemant Kumar Sharma; Secretary Electronics and Information Technology Manoj Mishra; Special Secretary Home Santosh Bala; Director, Fire Services Sunil Roy and other senior officers from departments concerned participated in the discussions.