RHON­DOR DOWLAT

and AKASH SAMA­ROO

Pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Leo Ramkissoon said ten per cent of the ve­hi­cles as­signed to the T&T Fire Ser­vice are out of ser­vice be­cause of lack of main­te­nance and prob­lems im­port­ing spare parts. He said the En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment of the Fire Ser­vice, which falls di­rect­ly un­der the Chief Fire Of­fice Arnold Bris­to, was re­spon­si­ble for the main­te­nance and re­pair of ve­hi­cles

He said he hoped pro­cure­ment of the spare parts and re­pairs of ve­hi­cles would be done ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view, Bris­to blamed fire of­fi­cers for “mash­ing up” the ve­hi­cles. Ramkissoon wants him to apol­o­gise to fire of­fi­cers.

“I am not back­ing down from call­ing on be­half of the of­fi­cers for an apol­o­gy to be is­sued be­cause it is not true that most of the ve­hi­cles are dam­aged, off the run, or de­fec­tive be­cause of mis­han­dling of ve­hi­cles. I am de­bunk­ing that state­ment. I re­ject it be­cause the ve­hi­cles were not prop­er­ly be­ing main­tained and there was the un­avail­abil­i­ty of spare parts,” Ramkissoon said.

“The chief must apol­o­gise and fo­cus on do­ing all that he can do to get the re­quired spare parts ex­pe­di­tious­ly and pro­cure­ment ex­pe­di­tious­ly to bring re­lief soon. Peo­ple do not care who is to blame.”

Bris­to de­scribed claims made by the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion as disin­ge­nious. He said Wednes­day’s meet­ing with the Per­ma­ment Sec­re­tary in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry was a mean­ing­ful step for­ward.

“Quite a num­ber of the is­sues that they were rais­ing have since moved to an ad­vanced state in terms of be­ing able to ac­quire some of the things that are need­ed,” Bris­to said in an in­ter­view on The Morn­ing Rum­ble pro­gramme on Free­dom 106.5FM yes­ter­day.

Ramkissoon had com­plained that fire of­fi­cers got lit­tle as­sur­ance that more re­sources are com­ing their way. How­ev­er, Bris­to said pro­cure­ment of breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus is un­der­way.

“That has been ap­proved and that has gone to the process to be ex­e­cut­ed by the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board,” he said.

In ad­di­tion, sev­en more fire ten­ders have been or­dered, but they won’t be here any time soon.

“You can’t walk in off the street and pur­chase a fire ap­pli­ance. It takes be­tween 12 and 18 months, from the pro­cure­ment or­der to the de­liv­ery,” Bris­to ex­plained.

Bris­to said in 2014, the gov­ern­ment of the day set out to con­struct fire sta­tions in Ma­yaro, Pe­nal, Cha­gara­mas, Wood­brook, La­dy Hales Av­enue and Arou­ca. But in 2017, when it was time to pro­cure fire ten­ders for those lo­ca­tions, some­thing hap­pened which cre­at­ed a domi­no ef­fect.

“When the ten­der­ing process was ex­e­cut­ed, it wasn’t done in the nor­mal con­ven­tion­al man­ner in which fire ser­vice and gov­ern­ment would have ac­quired ve­hi­cles and that process showed flaws.

“The val­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, when they met, would have rec­om­mend­ed a dif­fer­ent course of ac­tion be­cause the Fire Ser­vice, which is sup­posed to be the ex­perts, weren’t al­lowed to con­sid­er the tech­ni­cal com­po­nents of the equip­ment that was be­ing pur­chased. That would have caused the whole process to be scrapped,” he said.

Bris­to said be­cause the process was stopped and the ap­pli­ances for the sta­tions not pro­cured, “when the sta­tions were opened, they were now forced to place ap­pli­ances which we would nor­mal­ly use as back­up to fa­cil­i­tate planned main­te­nance and re­pairs in­to these sta­tions to en­sure we have a pres­ence to sup­ply the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty.”

“Cur­rent­ly our fleet is op­er­at­ing be­tween 50 per cent to 55 per cent be­cause we too have been im­pact­ed by COVID. Nor­mal­ly we would stock a cer­tain num­ber of spares to en­able the main­te­nance and re­pairs of the ap­pli­ances. Be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and the pe­ri­od of time it would have tak­en, those spares would have been utilised to keep the ap­pli­ances run­ning,” he said.

He said due to sup­ply chain is­sues, parts which were or­dered two years ago are just ar­riv­ing.

Bris­to said he had com­mis­sioned a na­tion­wide risk as­sess­ment to iden­ti­fy the gaps which were af­fect­ing the ser­vice.

The is­sue of re­sources for the Fire Ser­vices was brought in­to the spot­light fol­low­ing the deaths of Kem­ba Mor­ris and her eight-year-old daugh­ter Za­ya in a fire at their Quinam Road, Siparia Home. Res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty com­plained that fire of­fi­cers took too long to ar­rive at the scene.