Recently the Government of Maharashtra has enacted ‘The Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures (Amendment) Act, 2023’, wherein the Fire & Emergency Service Fees has been increased manifolds as compared to the originally introduced and enacted, act & rule of 2009. Furthermore such fees are now linked with the Annual Statement of Rates (ASR) in percentage of the construction rates as per its quality.
As per The Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures (Amendment) Act, 2023 the rates are 0.25% to 0.50% on Residential Buildings, 0.50% to 0.75% on Institutional buildings and 0.75% to 1.00% on Commercial and Industrial buildings of the Annual Statement of Rates (ASR), which are multiplied by the total built-up area of the building under consideration. And this built-up area also includes the area of basement, easements, stilts, podium, staircases, lifts, lobbies, passages, balconies, cantilever portions, service floors, and refuge areas.
VTA believes that the process of applicability of the Fire & Emergency Service Fees as per Fire Act is fine; however the quantum of charges now being deriving on the entire built up area is taking the total fees per building into Lakhs & Crores of Rupees.
Tejinder Singh Renu, secretary of VTA said, such fees not only adds to the apartment costs, the burden finally fails on the end user the customer and the biggest suffers being the Institutional and an industrial building as such a cost becomes the Capital Investment, thereby adding to the main corpus. Such huge capital burden eventually discourages investments in Maharashtra. Even for plan sanctioning nowadays crores of rupees is charged as plan sanctioning charges and now this Fire Fees is an illogical and unethical added burden.
VTA dispatched a memorandum to Eknath Shinde – Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis – Deputy Chief Minister, S. S. Warrick – Director, Maharashtra Fire Services, Mumbai and Dr. Abhijit Chaudhari, IAS – Municipal Commissioner NMC, requesting to rethink on such a hike which has taken the Fire Service Fees to abnormally high and it should be reduced to a logical percentage in public interest.
