Staff shortage, lack of equipment ail fire station: Phillaur MLA
Phillaur, October 14
A day after the incident of fire in the PSPCL office disrupted the electricity supply to some parts of the town and caused an immense loss, MLA Vikramjit Singh Chaudhary on Friday slammed the AAP government over unavailability of staff and essential equipment in the fire station.
He alleged that despite getting fire tenders five months ago the fire station could not be operational due lackadaisical attitude of the AAP government towards life and property of the people.
Taking a serious note of the matter on Friday, MLA Chaudhary shot off another letter to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Local Government Minister Dr Inderbir Singh Nijjar reiterating his demand to immediately provide the requisite staff and equipment to run the fire station. He said despite his repeated requests to the government, the fire station in Phillaur was not made operational and remained only on paper. Due to this, the people were constrained to call the fire tenders from Phagwara, leading to unnecessary delay in extinguishing the fire.
He said last month also, he had written to the Local Government Minister asking for staff and equipment, but no action was taken.
He said to run the fire station, there was a requirement of personnel such as firemen and drivers, a tubewell to fill water, hose pipes, portable fire extinguishers, aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) to extinguish fuel and chemical fires, and safety equipment including breathing apparatus sets, suits and gumboots.
The legislator said the problem of shortage of personnel and equipment was so severe in the fire stations of Punjab that even AAP MLA Narinder Kaur Bharaj was forced to raise the matter in the last session of the Vidhan Sabha.
MLA further stated that due to his efforts , a fire station was approved for Phillaur and the vehicles were delivered this May, but as the AAP government had done nothing, the vehicles had become white elephants.
Slamming AAP’s Prem Kumar, who had sought to take credit for the establishment of the fire station in Phillaur, MLA Chaudhary asked when he was so ready to bring the fire tenders from Phagwara and take credit despite making no effort to establish the station, why he didn’t now drive them to the PSPCL office to extinguish the fire.
