Hyderabad could well become a city of malls at the rate they are coming up in the city. You name a major infrastructure or a construction company and it would be planning or executing the construction of a mall in Hyderabad. While ten malls are functioning in Hyderabad, ten more are in various stages of completion.  According to official estimates, from the existing six lakh square ft, the “mall space” is expected to increase to 35 lakh sq ft by the end of next year.

Hyderabad is regarded as having the maximum potential for growth of the “mall market” among metros across the country because of the comparatively lower real estate prices and the sizeable and growing numbers of the high-income people. As retail marketing gets a boost and people get yet another get-away in easy reach, have enough safety measures been taken to keep the people safe in the malls?

Purushottam Reddy, chief city planner of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, points out that the government last year brought out an order that makes stringent provisions to ensure that builders do not get away with any dilution of norms or from the sanctioned plan. To this GO, an amendment is in the pipeline laying down not only stringent safety norms but which will make make any deviation or lapse extremely expensive to the builders/promoters. “We are coming up with an amendment to make any deviation from the sanctioned plan very expensive with a stiff penalty. Earlier the punishment was a nominal penalty but it is going to be prohibitive now,” he said.

Although no major accident has taken place in any Hyderabad mall, an insider who did not want to be identified, believes that tragedy is waiting to happen. “The malls are virtual death traps. I shudder to think what would happen if a fire breaks out in the fifth floor of my mall.” The fifth floor of this mall houses half a dozen movie screens. The escape routes are too few, the number of people to be evacuated too large and the steps too narrow, all of which works out to a disaster. “The Indian psyche is not yet adjusted to this western concept of a mall. Safety is a far cry. It is going to take time for total safety to be ensured in our malls,” she said.

Payal, a mother of a hyperactive eight-year old boy, believes that accidents like those in the Hyderabad restaurant or the Bangalore mall are mainly due to the carelessness of parents. “This is not to say that malls should not provide 100 per cent safety but as parents we should ensure that our kids don’t play on escalators, for instance,” she said.

How do our malls compare with those abroad in terms of safety? Reddy feels the safety norms and building codes are similar but the difference lay in implementing them. For instance, the escalator equipment is imported and installed but to ensure their efficient functioning and maintaining them, the desired skilled personnel are not available.