Fatal accidents in hazardous industries decreasing in Odisha

Odisha has recorded a substantial decrease in fatal chemical accidents in hazardous industries during the last 10 years, an official said on Wednesday.

While there were 121 fatal accidents in 2010, it got reduced to 78 in 2012 and then consistently followed a declining trend over the years. In the current year, the number of fatal accidents in the state has come down to 31 till date, the official said.

This was revealed during the state crisis management group meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy here.

Tripathy directed the Labour Department to strengthen preventive enforcement and response mechanism through close monitoring and team operations.

Niranjan Sahu, Labor Commissioner-cum-Director, Boiler and Factories, said there are 4,490 factories and 2,497 boilers in the state.

"Out of them, 35 factories are major hazardous accident-prone factories spread over 13 districts. Apart from that, around 545 factories also have hazardous practices in their process of production. The chemical accidents generally occur because of fire, explosion and toxic release," said Sahu.

The Chief Secretary directed all the major accident hazardous (MAH) factories to update their standard operating procedure (SOP) as per the changing conditions of the machineries and the production process.

Sahu was directed to enforce standard maintenance procedure in all the MAH industries through at least two 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 crisis groups (LCGs).

Presently 29 DCGs and 15 LCGs are operating in the state.

It was decided in the meeting that an emergency response centre would be set up in the Directorate of Fire Services for immediate team response at the time of crisis.IANS