Fire Minister’s Fear

The Bengal Fire Minister Pratim Chatterjee’s worst fear is that he’ll wake up one morning to hear that his office has been reduced to ashes. Chatterjee says that Writers’ Building, the state secretariat that houses his office along with that of the CM and other important heads, is a virtual tinderbox. He has written to the public works and home departments many times to install fire alarms and safety systems in the iconic building built by the British, but to no avail.

The Bengal Fire Minister Pratim Chatterjee’s worst fear is that he’ll wake up one morning to hear that his office has been reduced to ashes. Chatterjee says that Writers’ Building, the state secretariat that houses his office along with that of the CM and other important heads, is a virtual tinderbox. He has written to the public works and home departments many times to install fire alarms and safety systems in the iconic building built by the British, but to no avail.

After a small fire broke out at a senior bureaucrat’s office chamber last week, Mukherjee sounded yet another warning. Small fires have broken out many times over the past couple of decades in the building, but they’ve been put out before they could spread.

“If something major happens, however, that too at night, this building will be reduced to ashes. That is my biggest fear,” Chatterjee told journalists.
For the CM and other ministers, however, the biggest fear right now seems to be their displacement from Writers’ Building after the Assembly polls next year.

Maybe that is why fire safety measures are not in the Left Front government’s list of priorities.

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Jaideep Mazumdar