Woes of Fire Services

State’s Fire Brigade technically called ‘The Fire and Emergency Services (F&ES) appears a unique brigade when examined in detail. 175 F&ES stations are functional across the State. The department has about 3600 posts of sanctioned strength, of which about 1700 are lying vacant. A recruitment process to fill the posts of firemen was initiated three years ago but it was put on hold due to unknown reasons. There has been no recruitment of mid-level officers since last three decades. The mid-level officers are nearing their superannuation age and new recruitment is not made. The mid-level officers cannot deliver the goods because they are reaching superannuation. In the fire stations, four to six service personnel are posted, against the requirement of 12. Only 11 officers are available for 21 districts while the post of one officer at Ramban is lying vacant. The shortage can be gauged by the fact that only a single officer is overlooking five districts including Srinagar, Ganderbal, Budgam, Leh and Kargil. These statistics show that this is indeed a unique department which is functional with 1700 vacancies unfilled.
This is what we may say lack of perception and deep irresponsibility. Whenever an incident of fire takes places and losses happen, the media and the people in general begin to accuse the Fire Fighting Services for not being able to tackle the situation. They do not care to take into account the ground realities, the difficulties, the shortage of man power and other logistical difficulties of fire fighting brigade. Each district has been provided with a fire fighting squad. But it is only in name and not in reality because trained fire fighting personnel are not there who would man an emergency situation. We must remember that F&ES have not the only duty of fire fighting although that is the primary one. There are other duties assigned to it. For example all private schools while seeking recognition from the Government have to produce a certificate from the F&ES Department that provision of firefighting has been in place. How can the F&ES Department issue certificates to nearly 3000 private educational institutions with no man power at its disposal. This is a practical difficulty.
We emphasize upon the Government to respond to this utterly discouraging situation in the F&ES Department. Better would-be if the Government opens a training college for fire fighting training within the state so that we have the trained personal at our disposal to be recruited and put on service.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here