Ensuring Fire Safety in Public Facilities

The State Audit Office has examined the extent to which fire-safety inspections conducted by the Emergency Management Service (hereinafter referred to as the Service) ensure compliance with the fire-safety requirements in facilities subject to supervision (hereinafter - the facility).

In 2018, reform of the civil security system was implemented, which resulted in the following changes:

• The amount of fines for violations of fire safety requirements increased from GEL 50-1,000 to GEL300-10,000;

• The list of facilities subordinated to fire supervision increased from 9,103 facilities to at least 15,000 facilities;

• The service was reorganized and the number of inspectors decreased from 201 to 32.

The audit revealed that the list of facilities under the Service was incomplete. In particular, 41 out of 231 facilities (18%) subject to supervision identified by the audit team on the reference website were not registered by the Service. Consequently, these facilities have not been inspected even though they have permanently been in operation in recent years.

As a result of reform of 2018, in response to the increase in the list of supervised facilities and the reduction of the number of inspectors, the Service has not developed criteria for selecting facilities, appropriate methodology and a new system of inspectors’ distribution to facilities. In addition, statistics on fires and inspections cannot identify risk-bearing objects.

The study revealed that in the first half of 2018, there was an inhomogeneous approach to making recommendations in the districts of Tbilisi. In some cases, specific recommendations were not issued in some areas.

To ensure the proper quality of recommendations, systematic quality control mechanisms and measures to improve the qualifications of inspectors are not in place. Besides, the Service has not developed a unified consolidated standard for fire safety requirements that will incorporate all important fire safety requirements.

The audit revealed that in most of the facilities subject to fire supervision fire safety requirements were not met, and the rate of compliance with recommendations issued by the Service was low. Specifically, according to detailed inspections conducted in the first half of 2018, only in 1 of 226 facilities inspected fire safety requirements were not violated and no recommendations were issued, and according to the verification inspection conducted within the same period, 100% of recommendations issued in previous years were fulfilled only in 14% of facilities (in 59 facilities out of 408 facilities where violations were identified).

In 2017 and the first half of 2018, the authority to apply to the court with the request to fine facilities and fully or partly suspend exploitation of buildings, production sites, storage facilities or work was not properly exercised. In particular, 50% of facilities with violations inspected in the first half of 2018 were not fined, and activities of only one facility were suspended by the court decision. There are no internal control mechanisms in place to ensure effective enforcement by inspectors of response mechanisms defined by the legislation.

It is also worth mentioning that 21% of the facilities fined in the first half of 2018 did not pay fines. This is related to the fact that the Service has no mechanism in place to control payment of fines.

Recommendations to the state subordinate agency-Emergency Management Service:

In order to fully register facilities subordinated to state fire supervision, the Service, in collaboration with other state agencies (such as the Revenue Service), will systematically ensure updating of the list of facilities;

In order to optimally carry out fire-safety inspections, the Service shall ensure that the inspections are properly planned, for which purpose it is necessary to develop the criteria, methodology for selecting the facilities to be inspected and the system of designating inspectors to the facilities;

In order to eliminate all significant violations of fire safety requirements, as a result of fire-safety inspection of the facility, the Service is required to:

• Methodologically conduct the fire-safety inspection process, including developing a uniform standard and a form to be completed by inspectors during the inspection;

• Develop inspectors qualification policy and training module;

• Introduce an appropriate quality control mechanism for inspectors’ performance, which ensures the completeness and quality of the recommendations issued.

For the effective functioning of the sanctioning system of facilities subject to supervision, the Service will develop a proper control mechanism, through which, in accordance with the legislation, all facilities that violate fire safety requirements will be fined and fines will be recovered.