Kolkata, Feb 11 (IANS) Sara Bangla Atashbaji Unnayan Samity (All Bengal Fireworks Development Association) has written a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, expressing concerns about the “dangerous” training imparted in the name of making eco-friendly firecrackers, sources said on Wednesday.
A copy of the letter has been sent to the state’s Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty and the Additional Chief Secretary of the Small and Cottage Industries Department.
The letter, written on Tuesday, has demanded immediate administrative intervention.
The association’s chairman, Babla Roy, alleged that under the guise of training on ‘environmentally friendly fireworks’, some illegal and dangerous fireworks called ‘cold pyro’ are being taught in the Badge Budge area of South 24 Parganas district.
He claimed that these products do not fall under the ambit of fireworks at all and high-risk chemicals like ‘nitrocellulose’ and ‘amyl perchlorate’ are used in their manufacture.
The letter clearly states that all these chemicals are not approved by the Petroleum and Explosive Safety Organization (PESO) and are on the banned list.
The letter further states that if such education is given to unlicensed and untrained people, the situation may go beyond the control of the administration. If such education in making fireworks spreads, it will no longer be possible to control it and its result may lead to terrible accidents and loss of life.
In the letter, the platform also mentioned the recent Anandapur fire incident which claimed lives of 27 people.
They claimed that the use of low-quality, unauthorised and banned raw materials in that accident resulted in the loss of many lives. To prevent such incidents, it has been demanded that firework manufacturers make it mandatory to preserve the quality test reports of raw materials and related invoices from laboratories approved by the Ministry of Forests and Environment and the National Accreditation Board of Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL).
The association believes that this will make it easier to determine the real cause after the accident.
–IANS
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