Ludhiana, Nov 17: Two persons died and four were seriously injured in a boiler blast which occurred in M.R Dyeing located on Tajpur Road today. Ramdev (30) died on the spot while Suraj (25) died at CMCH.
The injured patients have been identified as Gariba, Pappu, Billu and Jeet Bahadur. Although the police have registered an FIR against Ashok and Vinay Kumar, owners of the dyeing unit, they have not made any arrest so far.
Ironically, while the police and administration rushed to the site of mishap immediately, no one from factories department, under whose purview such accidents come, reached the spot to check whether safety norms were being followed by the unit or not.
SDM Manpreet Singh Chatwal, who also reached the spot confirmed that no one from Factories Department visited the unit.
Besides, the role of the pollution board has also come under a cloud because as per the police investigation, the dyeing units had not obtained any approval from the pollution control board for running the boiler.
According to information, the boiler busted due to overheating.
Pardeep Kumar, executive engineer, PPCB, when contacted by Newsline said, “We are looking into the case, but I am yet to find out whether M.R Dyeing took permission from us to run the boiler or not.” Till evening, the pollution board authorities could not tell whether the unit had taken permission or nor putting a question mark over the entire process.
It needs to be mentioned that the boiler can store 1,200 litres of water which boils at 80 degree celsius. The SDM said, “The staff at the unit was not trained to handle such sensitive equipment.”
The impact of the blast was so high that it caused severed damage to entire unit and also caused panic in the area.
It needs to be mentioned that this is the third such incident to have occurred in the past one month. On October 24, the boiler blast in a dyeing unit located on Bahadurke road had resulted in injuries to five workers. In another mishap which occurred in the first week of November, the dyeing unit at Jalandhar by-pass had suffered losses because of the fire while the workers had a narrow escape.
Safety norms had not been complied with by these units. But so far, neither the industry nor the pollution control department has taken any action against any of these units.
–Agencies