Ahmedabad Mirror: Ahmedabad: Friday, January 26, 2018.
In a dusty
garage at one end of the Danapith fire station lies an unassuming vehicle. At
first glance, it looks like any other ordinary vehicle used by the government.
This SUV, though, is extremely important not only for Ahmedabad, but the whole
of Gujarat. Why, you ask? It is lone ‘member’ of the Gujarat State Fire
Service! You won’t be wrong in thinking that the GSFS should have actual
trained professionals as part of the team.
Yet, three
years after it was set up to handle emergencies in municipalities across the
State, GSFS does not have any manpower, not even a chief, reveals the reply to
an RTI filed by Mirror. Interestingly, even the SUV was bought only last year.
The Directorate was set up in 2015, according to the Gujarat Fire Prevention
and Life Safety Measures Act (2013), to provide better coordination between
emergency services of municipalities across Gujarat in case of a State-wide
emergency or disaster.
Till date,
though, the government has not appointed a single person to 29 posts allocated
to the Directorate. The GSFS should have a Director, Deputy Director, 5
Regional Fire Officers, and 22 personnel including technicians, accountants,
clerks and telephone operators. According to officials, apart from the 29
personnel, the GSFS should have 22 divisional fire officers, 50 station
officers, 56 sub-officers, 684 leading firemen, 1,596 drivers and 4,986 firemen
under it.
The plan was
to install GSFS offices at the Old Sachivalay in Gandhinagar, where the set-up
would be comparable to Police Bhavan – the headquarters of the Gujarat Police.
A senior officer revealed that the offices have been ready for the past 9 to 10
months but there are no employees to occupy the space.
Incapable
of fighting State-wide disaster
According to
the RTI, a total of five Regional Fire Officers were supposed to be appointed
to manage different sections of the State: Gandhinagar, Vadodara, Gandhidham,
Rajkot and Surat. Instead of hiring full-time personnel, officers from fire
services of municipal corporations have been deputised to hold charge of these
posts. Confirming this, Chief Fire Officer (Ahmedabad) M F Dastoor says, “The
five officers continue to serve their primary posts, while handling this extra
charge. I, too, am only on deputation to GSFS as in-charge Director, but my
primary role is as CFO of Ahmedabad.”
Pointing at the
lack of infrastructure, Dastoor said, “There are 24 municipalities that have no
fire services. The other municipalities are incapable of handling disasters
like huge fires and floods due to lack of infrastructure and manpower, the
eight municipal corporations. One would expect the eight municipal corporations
to be integrated with GSFS. But this is not the case.”
And still, it
is the municipal corporations that sent officials and vehicles, sometime more
than 100 km away, to help out smaller towns in battling blazes, officials say.
During the 2017 floods, municipal corporations had to rush boats to villages as
the affected municipalities were incapable of handling the situation. Dastoor
says, “If GSFS is fully functional, it can ensure that the municipalities have
enough manpower and infrastructure to respond to disasters in time. Lives and
property can be saved if rescue time is reduced drastically.”
Insufficient
allocation of budget by State govt
For 2017-18,
the Gujarat government has allocated just Rs 4 crore to GSFS. However, this
budget is sorely inadequate. Dastoor has appealed to the government to allocate
at least Rs 43 crore in the coming financial year to get things working on the
ground. “We need Rs 35 crore for a training institute and Rs 8 crore to build
two new fire stations in the State,” he adds. An estimate of the amount
required to set up adequate fire stations and recruit manpower for GSFS would
cost the exchequer at least Rs 1,502 crore, reveal sources. However, officers
say there is hardly any hope of this demand being approved. Several attempts to
contact Principal Secretary (Urban Housing and Urban Development) Mukesh Puri
was unsuccessful.
.JPG)
.JPG)
