photo source : New Indian Express
Away from the
melancholy, here is some insurance angle read in Indian Express, Chennai
edition. A fire insurance of a meagre `1
crore and a public liability insurance of `5 lakh for two days, was all that
the Puttingal temple administration in Kollam, took, where more than 112 people
were killed in the fire cracker tragedy in the wee hours of Sunday. More than
350 people were injured and 500 houses destroyed at Puttingal tragedy. The
amount spent for the fire display at temple is estimated to be `10 lakh. The
amount spent to buy the insurance cover is about `50,000.
The policy taken by
the temple from the Kollam office of New India Assurance Company is
insufficient to cover even the damages. Further, since firecrackers were stored
without permission, claim settlement could get delayed ! “The victims can make
claims from three sources. First from the temple authority, secondly if anyone
files a PIL in the court and third compensation declared by the state,” said
Delhi based insurance expert Vipul Soota, co-founder of Learning Enablers, an
insurance education portal. Many of the
105 major and small temples in Kerala are not insured or under-insured during
the festival days. Thiruvananthapuram has 27 major temples and Alappuzha 15. “Generally
these occasions are gravely under-insured,” said Viswanathan Odatt, Managing
Director, Aims Insurance Broking Private Ltd.
Often fire display
in temple festivals in Kerala are conducted with no insurance cover or for
pittance. “The insurance is taken, with a limited view—to get the approval for
conducting fire display from the authorities,” said a senior executive of New India
Assurance Company. “The amount is too small when compared to the damages and
loss of life. The only hope is the ‘waiver’ clause in the case of the insurance
policy which allows the insurance company to decide whether to give the
insurance amount or not,” said Ramachandran Nair, Administrative Officer, New
India Assurance Company. “Taking fire
and public liability insurance for temple festivals and church feasts in the
state should be made mandatory and properly insured,” says Sushil Kumar, an LIC
agent who has worked in the region for more than two decades, adding the people
here have more than one life policy.
I never knew that
these are being insured – whether your Company would be willing to cover this,
after reading accidents like this, is well known ! … a day after the temple tragedy, in which the death
toll rose to 109, three cars laden with explosives were seized by the police
about 500 metres away from the Puttingal Devi temple adds a new conspiracy angle. City Police
Commissioner P. Prakash is quoted as saying that the cars, found parked near
the temple, came to the notice of the local people late on Sunday. They alerted
the police. On Monday morning, the police cordoned off the area and examined
the cars, which were found packed with explosives, some of which were of high
intensity. Since the State police did not have the expertise to defuse them,
the task was assigned to experts of the
Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation camping at Paravur for the
investigation into Sunday’s explosions. Mr. Prakash said two of the cars
carried Kollam registration numbers and one Thiruvananthapuram. Their ownership
was being verified with the Transport Department.
Makes a sad reading
indeed !
With grief-
S.Sampathkumar
12th Apr 2016
