$82m required for emergency services

Civil Protection Unit national director Mr Madzudzo Pawadyira yesterday told delegates who attended the Fire Safety, Emergency Response and Training Programme conference in Bulawayo that the emergency services were not working effectively because of operational constraints.
“Our emergency services countrywide need about $82 million in order to get things going. Of this amount the Civil Protection Unit needs $23 million while $4 million is needed for the sub-aqua unit to operate efficiently,” said Mr Pawadyira.

He said efforts were under way to solicit for funding from development partners in order to revamp the emergency services sector.
Mr Pawadyira said the Government was in dialogue with its Japanese and Indian counterparts to get assistance for smaller local authorities outside Bulawayo and Harare.

He appealed for assistance from Operation Florian and other partners saying operational challenges such as depleted equipment were also exposing rescue workers to risk.
In his presentation, Harare chief fire officer Mr Sevias Mugavha bemoaned poor maintenance of fire fighting equipment in most local authorities and said the situation was worse in the capital.

He said although Harare was the biggest city with about four million people, it was serviced by only four fire stations instead of the ideal 10.
“We have virtually not had any expansion of our emergency services in the last 30 years. The equipment we have is very old and not reliable. In the early 1990s Harare was the most equipped city in the Sadc region but that is no longer the case.
“The city is under protected because of delays in response times. For the past 10 years we have suffered a shortage of ambulances. A lot of lives are lost which could have been saved if our systems were efficient,” said Mr Mugavha.

“The escalating accidents are increasing the burden on our fleet. Most of our operations are still manual hence incident management is not efficient. There is a serious need to capacitate our emergency services and improve councils’ appreciation of this.”
He said there was a need to boost the fire fighting fleet of vehicles and ladders among other machinery in order to save lives and protect property.

Speaking at the same occasion, a fire fighting and management expert, Mr Shepard Ndlovu, who is also a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, said there was a need to beef up education and research in fire fighting in order to improve efficiency.
He also said architects and engineers should construct buildings that will be easily accessed by fire fighters and allow people to be evacuated faster in order to save lives.

Meanwhile, Operation Florian Zimbabwe project manager Mr Anthony Burscough pledged his organisation’s commitment to partner with local authorities in improving emergency service delivery.
He commended Bulawayo’s fire and ambulance services and said other councils were free to seek help from his organisation.

Operation Florian, which has been working with the Bulawayo City Council in the past years, has so far completed two phases of assistance. In these phases the organisation has assisted council in various fire fighting training programmes and donated equipment worth over one million dollars.
The organisation has also agreed to do a third phase, which would prioritise training on fire fighting and management.

The conference was organised by the Bulawayo City Council in collaboration with Operation Florian, a fire and rescue service humanitarian organisation based in the United Kingdom.

Representatives of local authorities that include Gweru, Plumtree, Gwanda, Victoria Falls, Chinhoyi, Kadoma, Masvingo, Kwekwe, the police and the army, the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) and the National Social Security Authority (NSSA), also attended the conference.