Tughlakabad fire tragedy worst in history of Indian exports

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SME Times News Bureau | 10 Apr, 2010
A major fire broke out the Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Tughlakabad, near the Tughlaqabad railway station in Delhi early on Saturday, has proved to be worst tragedy in the history of Indian Exports, said Delhi Exporters Association in a press release today.

Approximately more than 25,000 export shipments were involved & the loss is irrepable, it added.

The commodities involved were mainly Readymade Garments, Textile, Madeups, Handicrafts, Leather Goods, Engineering items & Medicines. It take three to four months to manufacture medium size export shipments & in few hours all the goods are vanished.

While condemning the incident, Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) has informed that the handicrafts products worth over Rs 60 crore (approx.) were gutted in a major fire at Tughlakabad.

“The ICD is always over congested as more than 400 containers of goods are always stored there as against the capacity of 200 containers of goods only. These containers carry approx. 30 percent handicrafts, approx. 50 percent garments and approx. 20 percent Miscellaneous goods. Each container values between Rs 10 lakh to Rs One crore. There is massive damage to the goods,” said Raj Kumar Malhotra, Chairman of the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) after visiting the ICD.

At least there would be an estimated damage to the tune of Rs 200 crore in this fire and a heavy export loss, as all records are burnt and cancellation of export orders. There is an incentive loss to the Exporters also in the absence of records at the ICD, Mr Malhotra said and added that overall, there would be a huge foreign exchange loss in the absence of these exports.

Since the fire was not under control for few hours S.P. Agarwal, President, Delhi Exporters Association sent urgent SOS to Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Commerce & Industry Minister & Cabinet Secretary to send army to help the fire brigade teams already fighting with fire.

Agarwal has also demanded that Army should take control of the area & try to restore normalcy so that export shipments start going again and also wants compensation to exporting community who had suffered huge losses due to this fire.

He also demanded immediate instant export credit finance, across the table at 0% interest so that the goods could be remanufactured as soon as possible to restore foreign buyer’s confidence.

A big question? Were the enough antifire devices installed in this largest exports container depot in Asia? Agarwal demanded an immediate high level enquiry as to why this had happened & safety measures for future.

"There should be enough police control so that undesirable elements are kept away from the venue," he added.