ISLAMABAD, Jan 16: Most of the fire extinguishers in the government offices, particularly in Pakistan Secretariat and Cabinet Secretariat, have expired many years ago and are ineffective, it has been learnt on Wednesday.

Official sources told Dawn that almost all the federal ministries and divisions on Wednesday held meetings to review their respective safety measures as required under the “Security Book”.

The meetings were convened following the burning of the 17- storeyed Shaheed-i-Millat Secretariat on Tuesday evening. It was decided to place new fire extinguishers on every floor of different blocks, beef up security measures and strengthen visitors’ check and identification system.

Some of the fire extinguishers were inoperative and others had crossed the expiry dates, said a joint secretary of a ministry, who had presided over the meeting of his ministry.

The sources said most of the meetings were presided over by the federal secretaries and in some cases by joint secretaries.

The participants of the meetings expressed their dissatisfaction over the security arrangements at the secretariat. The security staff of the secretariat blocks had been directed to be extra-cautious in future, the sources added.

The sources said some of the ministries had also decided to carry out comprehensive scanning of their offices to ensure that there were no loose electricity connections or bare wires.

It was noted that most of the short-circuiting resulted because of the presence of a large number of rats throughout the secretariat. It was, therefore, decided to carryout fumigation throughout the secretariat to eliminate rats.

Senior officers were also directed to strictly implement ban on smoking in government offices.

It was noted in some ministries that officials never had the opportunity of civil defence training which was necessary for inhouse capacity building on such unfortunate incidents because it was too difficult for the fire brigades to control once the situation was out of hands.