The Bengal cabinet on Monday set up a committee headed by chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi to find out the possibilities of setting up clusters of green cracker units in the districts that witnessed mushrooming of illegal firework factories.
The move, ministers present at the meeting held at Nabanna on Monday said, came in the backdrop of blasts at illegal firework factories in Egra in East Midnapore and Budge Budge in South 24-Parganas claiming multiple lives.
“The committee will find out whether the illegal firework factories can be converted into green cracker factories in the clusters to be set up on vested land near district towns. If this can be done, thousands of livelihoods and lives can be saved as better monitoring and preventive measures can be implemented in the green cracker clusters. The committee will send its report within two months,” said Firhad Hakim, the state urban development and municipal affairs minister as well as the mayor of Calcutta.
Sources present in the meeting said that the chief minister herself raised the issue during the cabinet meeting and pointed out that something should be done for these illegal firework factories as these are posing a threat to the lives of workers as well as tarnishing the image of the state government.
“But at the same time, the chief minister made it clear that these firework factories generate thousands of jobs and steps have to be taken to ensure that the workers don’t lose their livelihoods,” said a minister.
Hakim said that people work in the firework factories in the districts knowing the risk involved with it only because of livelihood concerns.
“The idea of creating the clusters is to give jobs to these workers in their locality. We will give opportunities to all these firework factories to set up their green cracker units in the clusters. The state government will help them to secure all required permissions,” said Hakim.
Sources in the state administration said that the idea is a timely one as it will enable the state government to launch crackdown on the illegal firework factories once the clusters come up.
“Right now, the police cannot launch an aggressive crackdown on the illegal firework factories as thousands of people depend on these units to earn livelihoods. Once the majority of the units will be given a chance to convert themselves to green cracker production units, it will be easier to launch a crackdown on the illegal firework units,” said a bureaucrat.
Meanwhile, in Budge Budge in South 24 Parganas, three persons, including a minor girl, were killed due to a blast in an illegal firework unit on Sunday. On Monday, a fresh incident of blast was reported at the house of Trinamul Congress activist Sheikh Safique in Birbhum’s Dubrajpur.
The state government has already ordered a CID probe into the Budge Budge incident.
Sources said that all these incidents, which took place soon after the Egra incident that claimed 12 lives, have prompted the state government to take an initiative to bring all the illegal firecracker units under a legal framework.
