Why do culprits go scot-free in chemical warehouse fire incidents?

If the policy of ‘no chemical warehouse in residential area’ adopted after Nimtoli fire, which killed 124 people, yielded in a befitting manner, Churihatta fire wouldn’t have claimed 71 people.

If the government tracked the relocation of the chemical godowns of Churihatta, another warehouse fire at Gorabagh in Keraniganj wouldn’t have burned five more lives of the same family, including two children.

Bangladesh is witnessing one fire after another — Tazreen Garments, Nimtoli, Churihatta, BM Container Depot fire in Sitakunda of Chattogram and the latest Keraniganj — but authorities don’t wake up to the fire alarms properly.

So are the warehouse and factory owners as well as the authorities concerned.

They equally behave callously with fire safety of the employees working with hazardous elements in such errant warehouses.

Now some pertinent questions arise: How could the warehouse in question get clearance from the authorities concerned? How was the fire safety rule reflected while constructing the warehouse? Did the workers have a fire safety drill? Were the workers paid well so that they could ensure their own protection? What did the compliance officers or inspectors do about their regular inspection of such risky warehouses? The solution to such storehouse fires lies in the answers to the questions above.

Exemplary punishment should be awarded to those who are responsible for the fire incidents and scams.

Investigations into the fire shouldn’t be routine work like those of committees formed in previous incidents to probe an accident but the probe report was not made public.

Even if a few of them were made public, culprits identified in the report were let go scot-free.

It happened to share market scams in 2011, Sitakunda Fire in 2022 and other incidents but the perpetrators were found ruling party supporters and spared.

Only in the case of Tazreen Fashion Fire, owner and managing director Delwar Hossain, who is in prison, is awaiting trial.

If Ibrahim Khaled’s probe into share market scams in 2011 was taken into cognizance, the perpetrators of the scams would have been in jail.

Several lakh share market investors would have been happy to see the masterminds of 1996 share market scam, owner of Rana Plaza and all other criminals punished.