Wanting to do away with cumbersome paperwork, the Fire Department will soon conduct inspections to issue No Objection Certificates (NOC) on tablets. Training modules for the same among District Fire Officers (FDO) have begun and the Centre for Good Governance (CGG) has been tasked with creating the software required to link it to the department’s website.
With the department making application for NOCs online only from July 1 onwards, the introduction of the tablets will make the entire system of applying and issuing a certificate to a builder ‘paperless’, said a senior official.
“Once someone applies for an NOC online and fills in the details, the inspecting officer will simply tick yes or no about the building’s measurements. The NOC will be generated automatically,” he explained.
The official said that there are about 20 types of occupancy certificate for various buildings and other such modalities which have to be incorporated into the software. This will take a few months for the whole thing to be set up. “Once it is ready, the NOCs will reach the inbox of the applicants. There will be no need for us to involve our staff for paperwork,” he added.
As of now, 40 Samsung Galaxy Tab2 devices have been purchased by the Fire Department and training has begun for DFOs and other inspecting officers, said Regional Fire Officer Papaiah Varla. The senior official also added that even the renewal of NOCs will be done online henceforth. The Fire Department now gives NOCs to buildings for five years, unlike earlier annual exercise.
GHMC role ends
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s Fire Department Wing can’t issue NOCs once online system becomes functional.
Once the Fire Department takes NOC application online from July 1, the GHMC’s Fire Prevention Wing (FPW) will not be able to do the same in the city, as all of the applications will go to the head office’s server from where the files will reach the inspecting officers.
“The FPW wing has just three officers now, while we have about 300 personnel for Hyderabad who were not inspecting any premises prior to this. With the system going online, all the applications in Hyderabad will also come to the department, which can delegate inspections to its officers in the city,” said the senior official.
The Fire Department had written to the State Government to delegate the powers of the FPW back to it, along with the officers who were on deputation with the GHMC. The FPW was set up more than six years ago after the department had delegated the authority to issue NOCs to the civic body. However, it wrote to the State Government that the FPW was not performing its duties.
“Now the FPW can go back to doing what is supposed to do - to look at drawings, inspect buildings and other things. It had forgotten that and was only serving notices on building owners, at times wrongly to those which did not require NOCs,” added the official.
