Fire service college NAGPUR (NFSC)

Fire service college
The National Fire Service College (NFSC) based in city, as a unique institution of its kind in Asia, was pride of the country. Until a few years back it was the only college offering bachelor of engineering (fire) course and thanks to it Nagpur University the only one to have it on its repertoire.

But prolonged government apathy and denial of fundsled to a decline of the institution and ultimately closure of the prestigious course. However, there is ray of hope again as central government has earmarked Rs 205 crore for the NFSC. If all goes to plan, not only will the BE (fire) course restart from academic year 2014 but the intake capacity will also be increased to 60 from 30 when it was closed.

S Shamim, director, NFSC confirmed the development and said that union minister Mukul Wasnik and district collector Praveen Darade made efforts to get the amount sanctioned from the Union ministry of home affairs under which the college functions. He said on June 8, 2010, the ministry of home affairs confirmed sanctioning the money for college's development.

The amount would be spent for constructing new academic block, library block, administrative building, hostel with 400 students’ capacity, a guest house, a fire station with modern fire fighting equipment, and for devising field training modules of international standard. These will come up at NFSC's 43.35 acre land in Raj Nagar. Similarly, research and development lab and residential blocks will come up at 14.61 acres land near VNIT.

At present, the college is offering station officer and divisional officer's course of 25 weeks and 22 weeks duration. The intake capacity of both the courses is 100 to 120. However, after the new development, the intake capacity of the college will increase to 1,450. It will also introduce 31 new courses.

Entry to BE (fire) course would be through an all-India entrance examination as was the case earlier. Only candidates with BSc degree in chemistry along with mathematics or physics would be eligible. Even though the BE fire course was discontinued since 2006, the college is regularly taking affiliation for the course from the Nagpur university.

Sources said the college took help of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology and Laxminarayan Institute of Technology for some subjects and laboratory training for the course. As those institutions couldn't offer that owing to their own commitments, the course was stopped.

Sources said of the Rs 205 crore, Rs 5 crore will be spent for appointing international consultancy to design the training modules and technical assistance.

The work on buildings will begin from November 2010 and complete by 2013.