Fire Dept reels under staff crunch

Nikhil Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, June 18

Though the fire brigade has started getting the fire tenders and other required stuff gradually under the Smart City Mission, their major issue of staff crunch still remains unresolved.

The authorities concerned are not paying attention towards the issue which can seriously affect the disaster response mechanism in case any major fire incident takes place in city.

Only 5 fire stations for 17 lakh people

Despite the city has over 17 lakh population, the industrial hub is only having only five fire stations catering to the population. Fire stations have around 21 fire tenders and this number is not according to the norms of population. As per the norms, one fire tender is required after every 50,000 population and according to city’s population, which is over 17 lakhs, 34 fire tenders are required.

Recently, the Fire Department has been given four small quick response vehicles and three live detectors (victim locators). The quick response vehicles will enter the narrow lanes of old city areas where big fire tenders cannot reach, especially in those areas where many hosiery units are located. These live detectors will help the fire officials in sensing if any human being is trapped inside the building at the time of fire incident.

Apart from this, five inflatable lights were also allocated to the fire Brigade. As compared to this, staff is inadequate to handle things.

However, the department is facing huge staff crunch. Against 147 regular posts only 33 posts are filled while 114 posts are lying vacant. Interestingly, the post of assistant divisional fire officer has been lying vacant from long time but recently it was filled. Against four regular posts of fire station officers there is one fire station officer and 15 sub fire officers there are six fire officers while rest of the posts are still pending. However, as many as 67 employees (50 fireman and 17 drivers) hired through the PESCO.

A fireman, on the condition of anonymity, claimed that they got four quick response vehicles so as to reach in time for controlling the situation but staff is equally important. He said there is hardly any planning to recruit more regular staff. He claimed that due to the lockdown not many fire incidents are taking place but during normal days it is difficult to handle the peak season when they have to work for more than 12 hours and they are also not getting any overtime for the same.

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