Mayor appeals to CJP, COAS to help improve fire dept

Having already appealed to the prime minister and the Sindh chief minister to allocate special funds to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s ineffective fire brigade department, Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar on Friday requested not only Senate’s chairman, Supreme Court’s chief justice but also the Chief of Army Staff to look into the matter.

Speaking to media personnel at Mazar-e-Quaid following a meeting held to review the fire control department’s improvement, the mayor claimed that the department needed an allocation of at least Rs5 billion for it to be improved.

The mayor claimed that despite appeals to the prime minister and the provincial chief minister, not a single penny was reserved for the fire department in the current fiscal year’s budget. In a bid to stir up Senate chairman Raza Rabbani, Akhtar requested him to pass a resolution in the senate for the fire department of the city he belonged to. The department, the mayor said, needed to be provided machinery and fire tenders.

Citing international laws, the mayor said one fire station is dedicated to a population of 100,000 people, whereas this city with a population of 20 million has only 22 fire stations. “KMC should be provided with 230 fire tenders,” the mayor said, adding, that the KMC’s department has only one snorkel which can also not reach a building higher than eight storeys.

Slamming the Sindh government, Akhtar said that the department has been completely ignored by the provincial government, and demanded to know what political leaders in Islamabad were doing about it.

He said the city that provided the highest revenue to the country and Rs150 billion to the provincial government only has not a single penny reserved for it in the current budget. “If any big mishap occurs in Karachi, it would be an uphill task to save people’s lives as the fire department is in a horrible condition,” the mayor warned.

However, he added that efforts are being made to improve the KMC’s fire department and that 18 fire tenders were sent for repair. After the meeting, the city mayor examined the repair work of the vehicles.