Mohali Fire Dept lacks ‘firepower’

The fire station in the city has to cater to Mohali District as the other fire station is in Dera Bassi and that too suffered due to under staffing.

The fire station has nine vehicles with six of them being fire tenders. Every fire tender requires six people to properly operate the machine. At present only six people are available in every shift. So effectively the station just has enough staff to run one fire tender at a particular time. Even this fire tender is not available to the city as most of the time it is sent to places where political rallies are being held. In the case of emergency the staff has to work overtime to deal with the situation. Moreover,even if the full staff is available at any given time,even then they will be insufficient to fully operate all the fire tenders and other machinery.

The city is left vulnerable as the available fire tenders sometimes have are rushed to places as far as Nangal. It must be noted that Mohali and its adjoining areas have a lot of industries and in the case of an industrial fire like the one which happened in the year 2003,the fire department will be found wanting.

The district administration had advertised the recruitment of 24 firemen in the initial months of the year. Even after having conducting the medical tests of the applicants,the same were not hired and now the Code of Conduct which is in place due to SGPC elections have further delayed the staffing plan.

Varun Roojam,Deputy Commissioner,SAS Nagar,while acknowledging the problem said,“The staffing plan is currently stuck due to the Code of Conduct and the firemen will hired soon after it is lifted as we have completed all the formalities. Moreover,the fire department would also be getting new machinery which will further boost its capabilities.”

The MC officials say that the problems will be solved soon as they have asked Greater Mohali Area Development Authority to provide land to them for setting up two more fire stations in the city to cater to the demands of the growing city like Mohali.

The newly appointed Joint Commissioner of MC,Khushboo Goel,said,“We will take up the matter in the coming meetings and hope to solve the problems soon.”