Although Nagaland currently has only 9 functional fire stations, the state government has plans to tally the number up to 64 and set up a training centre for firemen and officers as well, to make the state safe from fire and equipped to fight fire breakouts.
This was revealed by parliamentary secretary for Prison, Home Guards, Fire & Emergency Services W. Kithan on Friday during the inauguration of directorate building of state Fire & Emergency Services here at PR Hill Kohima.
Kithan said considering the criteria laid down for national level standard of response to fire, such as population concentration, strategic and logistic locations, Nagaland still needed much to be done. In this regard, he said the state government has slated increasing the number of fire stations and setting up of a “modest” training centre.
He also disclosed that the state has only 369 fire services personnel in position, whereas optimum number of personnel required per station was estimated at 35 and 60 for the training centre, and as per National Disaster Management Authority guidelines, the state would need a man-power of around 1930.
Stating though three more fire stations were presently under construction at Peren, Longleng and Kiphire, Kithan lamented that Nagaland still has a long way to go to make the state comparatively safe from all types of fire hazards.
The parliamentary secretary also underscored the need for effective and efficient fire fighting forces in all “sizeable townships”. He said such forces were entrusted with a noble but “thankless” task of fighting outbreak of fire in their locality.
On slow growth rate and provisions of the directorate of Fire & Emergency Services, Kithan said ever since bifurcation of state fire department from the police force to function as a directorate in 1990, the subject was made entirely under ‘state list’ and all funding had to come from the revenue of the state.
He asserted that expensive and sophisticated fire fighting equipments could not be provided in Nagaland till recently as provisions of the department under ‘state list’ was poorly funded. However, he added that the central government was now taking measures to modernize countrywide fire establishments so that the required facilities would reach the preferred state department of fire.
Stating that a single organization could not take up the entire responsibility in any state as future provisions to fight fire was extremely costly, Kithan said links with metropolitan and urban bodies, town committees, societies, insurance organizations and voluntary set-ups to fight fires would make more resources available. Further, asserting that as fires were caused by people- accidentally, carelessly or otherwise, he called upon responsible public to be cautious and also cooperate in building up a viable fire service in the state.
SP directorate of Fire & Emergency Services Neilasa Sopfu chaired the inaugural programme while brief report on the construction of the building was delivered by HoD C.L. Singsit.
Built with a budget of slightly over Rs.94 lakhs, it was also informed that it took almost 13 years to complete the construction of the newly inaugurated building.
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