Photo: Collected
The Secretariat building that caught fire in the early hours of 26 December has been reopened after 11 days. All Secretariat officers and employees are allowed to bring their vehicles inside the building premises starting today (5 January), according to media reports.
Offices up to the fifth floor of the nine-storey building resumed operations. The fire-damaged sixth to ninth floors, however, remained closed. Abdul Hamid Khan, the secretary of the Public Works Department, visited the burnt floors of Building 7.
"Normal operations have resumed from today. Cleaning [the offices] is currently ongoing. The water lines and computer connections are also being repaired," he told reporters during the visit. Abdul Hamid said repair work on the four floors affected by the fire is also ongoing. "We aim to start work on these floors within the next 10-15 days, and we will try to complete the restoration work as soon as possible."
On 26 December, a fire broke out in the early hours at the Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka, severely damaging several floors of Building 7 and documents stored in them. It took 19 firefighting units around six hours to bring the flames under control and 10 hours to completely douse them, according to firefighters.
"The first report about the fire breaking out in the Secretariat came at 1:52am. Several firefighting units reached the scene and started fighting the flames at 1:54am," Fire Service and Civil Defence media cell officer Talha Bin Jasim told on 27 December.
The fire at such a time also sparked widespread speculation about its origin. The Cabinet Division initially announced a seven-member investigation committee to investigate the fire incident on 26 December afternoon. However, this committee was scrapped in the evening, and a revised committee was formed through a new order that night.
The new eight-member committee was headed by Nasimul Ghani, senior secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs. On 31 December, the committee said it was a loose electrical connection that led to the Secretariat fire. In its primary investigation, it also did not find any indication of sabotage, said chief of the probe committee Nasimul Ghani.
"We have prepared a detailed report, but further tests and analysis are underway to enhance the findings," he said during a media briefing.
Messenger/Tareq
