FAISALABAD: The Punjab government has formed a five-member committee to probe the fire which erupted in a unit engaged in refining used lubricants and claimed the lives of six people.
The committee will submit its report within a week and a notification was issued in this regard on Tuesday.
The fire erupted in the unit owned by Azam Chishti of Islam Nagar on Monday evening and it took hours before the Rescue 1122 controlled the fire.
The rescue officials recovered five burnt bodies from the spot and an injured person, Shahadat Ali of Chiniot, succumbed to his wounds on Tuesday at the Allied Hospital.
The committee is headed by additional deputy commissioner general and director labour, district officer industry, representative of the police department not below the rank of BS-17 and district officer emergency services 1122 are its members. The terms of reference of the committee include inquiry into legal status of factory under applicable laws, to investigate the cause of accident, to fix responsibility of accident, to recommend financial relief for the affectees as per law and to recommend preventive measures to avoid such incidents in future.
Rumours were doing the rounds that the boiler of the factory exploded, however, in an initial report the deputy chief inspector of boilersm Faisalabad, Faisal Waseem said he had visited the spot and came to know that several explosions took place in the factory.
No boiler or steam generator was installed in the mills. Therefore, it was not a boiler accident and the boilers inspection wing had no role to play therein, he added.
“It has also been observed that in the subject mills, no safety program & firefighting arrangements were available to avoid and control the fire,” he noted.
Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2020
