ACs and fire safety hydrants of Assembly central hall found defunct House yet to get fire safety certificate
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, July 22 2017:
In an embarrassing turn of events, the air conditioning systems of the Manipur Assembly building located at Chingmeirong were found inoperative and to add more woes, the fire safety systems of the building were also found to be in defunct state apart from failure to obtain a fire safety certificate .
The State Assembly building was inaugurated by then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in December 2011 .
According to a reliable source, during the Monsoon session of the State Assembly which began from July 20, three temporary indoor AC units could be spotted being installed in the central hall where MLAs sat as the centralised AC unit for the hall had stopped working .
The source pointed out that the there was no AC facility for the gallery which surrounded the central hall and added that the water dripping from the AC unit were being crudely collected by placing plastic buckets at the appropriate spots .
The visitor's toilet inside the Manipur Legislative Assembly complex also lacked adequate water .
On the other hand, a source pointed out that the hydrants, water hoses and coupling installed for fire safety measures in the Assembly building are not working, a problem which was discovered before the commencement of the Monsoon Assembly session .
The source also claimed that the Assembly building which was constructed by Simplex company and which has been used for conducting numerous Assembly sessions till now, had failed to procure a fire safety certificate from the Fire Service and it was also discovered that all the fire extinguishers ( weighing 5 kgs each), 12 numbers in total, kept in the complex had been bought in the year 2011 .
According to protocol, such important structures need to be checked every year for safety and need to obtain the appropriate fire safety certificate from the Fire service after the necessary survey .
Even after the work on the building finished, the company in charge of the construction work, handed over the ownership of the building complex part by part to the State Government, the source added .
It further stated that the Director of Fire Service has notified the authority concerned to obtain a fire safety certificate at the earliest.