Officials highlight enforcement steps and upcoming reforms, while stakeholders stress ongoing maintenance beyond one-time clearances
Margao: Responding to TOI’s series on fire safety vulnerabilities across the state, director of fire and emergency services, Nitin Raikar, has defended the department’s enforcement record for new construction, even as he confirmed the third-party audit system now stands ready to be rolled out in full.Raikar said every building above 15m in height goes through fire department scrutiny at two distinct stages before it can be occupied — an initial no-objection certificate (NOC) at the time the construction licence is sought, and a final NOC before the occupancy certificate is issued. Municipalities, he said, do not grant trade licences to any establishment without a fire NOC already in place. “All parameters are strictly checked during the inspection before NOCs are granted. Compliance has been made stricter following the Birch by Romeo Lane incident,” Raikar said.On the third-party audit mechanism — introduced under the state’s 2025 ease of doing business notification to ease the department’s inspection load — Raikar said the system was ready to be operationalised. “Independent auditors will conduct an audit and submit the report to us,” he said, describing a process under which empanelled agencies inspect a property and forward their findings to the department, which can accept the report or order its own inspection if it finds the findings inadequate.
But the reassurance on new construction does little to address the state of older buildings across Goa. A large number of structures predate the current NOC regime entirely, and neither the two-stage inspection process Raikar described nor the incoming third-party audit system offers any mechanism to bring these buildings under scrutiny retroactively. For occupants of such buildings, sources in the know said, the reform under way offers no immediate remedy.
The sources also said that the department’s emphasis on inspection at the point of licensing also does not address what happens after an NOC is granted. “Just getting an NOC is not enough. It is the owner of the property who should ensure that current systems are in working condition, and that drills and training are conducted,” a fire safety professional said, underlining that statutory clearance is only the starting point for ongoing safety compliance, not a substitute for it.
