Microtek office catches fire, incurs loss of Rs 25 lakh

The Chennai branch of Microtek International caught fire on July 4 at around
10.15 am. According to sources, the accident happened due to an electric short
circuit, which happened within Microtek warehouse in Narasinghapuram Street,
which housed the stock for Tamil Nadu market.

As a result of the accident, the adja-cent shops to Mic-rotek, Pelikan Office
Automation Pvt Ltd and Ace Computers also incurred loss worth Rs 1-2 lakh and Rs
75,000 res-pectively, following water gushing into their office-cum-stockroom,
when the fire force came to burn out the fire.

According to a rough estimate given by Sandeep Mathur, Branch Manager,
Microtek International, the loss incurred by the company comes to around Rs 25
lakh. These include products like motherboard, speakers, UPS, cabinets,
inverters and monitors from Microtek. Following a short circuit that happened
within Microtek, the UPS and monitors lying close to the electric board caught
fire immediately. While the fire force was involved in burning out the fire in
Microtek, water entered Pelikan and Ace Computers.

"For us the loss was caused just because our material got caught in the
water. Being month end, we had kept the materials down on the floor. All our ink
cartridges, CDs toners got fully spoilt with water entering them," said
Usha, Branch Head of Pelikan Automation. Pelikan is the regi-onal distributor
for Epson, Lexmark, Canon, and TVSE consumables.

Pelikan, which was to get a stock worth Rs 5.5 lakh from Ep-son on Saturday,
bre-athes a sigh of relief since the delivery got delayed, "If not, that
too would have cau-ght in this accident," added Usha. The st-ory of Ace
Compu-ters is the same as Pelikan where their motherboard, car-tridges, speakers
and printers got wet in the water, since these products were placed on the
floor.

Microtek has registered case with Chin-dadiripet police station and Ashok
Nagar fire office. "There will not be a shortage in the stock in the market
since our distributors are keeping stock. But it will take at least four to five
days for Microtek to open shop, since it is awaiting certification from the
police and fire authorities that the accident caused was due to short
circuit," said Mathur.

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Chennai