Major hazardous factories asked to update their SOP; Emergency Response Centre to be set up in Directorate of Fire Services

Bhubaneswar, 11/12:  Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy today directed all the major accident hazardous (MAH) factories to update their Standard Operating Procedure(SOP) as per changing condition of the machineries and production process. The direction was issued at the State Crisis Management Group meeting chaired by Tripathy in Lokseba Bhawan here today It was also decided in the meeting that Emergency Response Center would be set up in the Directorate of Fire Services for immediate team response at the time of crisis. Reviewing the progress, Chief Secretary Tripathy directed the Labor, Employment and ESI department to sharpen the preventive enforcement and response mechanism through close monitoring and team operation. Labor Commissioner-cum-Director Boiler and Factories Niranjan Sahu  informed that there are 4490 factories and 2497 boilers in the state. Out of them 35 factories are major hazardous accident prone factories. These are spread over 13 districts of Odisha. Besides, around 545 factories also have hazardous practices in their process of production. The chemical accidents generally occur because of fire, explosion and toxic release. Fatal accident data revealed that in 2010, 121 fatal accidents  had taken place and the number of such accident  came down to 78 in 2012 and the declining trend continued over the years. During the current year, 31 fatal accidents has been reported  till date. Director, Boiler and Factories was directed to enforce Standard Maintenance Procedure in all the MAH industries through at least 2 visits in a year. Tripathy further directed to convene frequent meetings of the District Crisis Groups (DCGs) and look into the preventive as well as awareness measures through active involvement of the Local CrisisGroups ( LCGs). Presently 29 DCGs and 15 LCGs are operating in the State. Tripathy directed the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) and Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) to have specially designed HAZCHEM vehiclesin their respective areas. IOCL was also requested to put another Emergency Response Vehicle in Khordha in addition to one in Balasore and one in Paradip.