KMC receives two fire trucks from Japan

Japanese govt trained eight fire officials on vehicles’ maintenance

KARACHI: In order to manage fires in high-rise buildings, the Society for Promotion of Japanese Diplomacy, under the Japan Grassroots Human Security Programme, donated two fire engines to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) at a ceremony held at the Old KMC building on Thursday.

According to sources at the KMC, when Mustafa Kamal was mayor, two snorkels were imported from Finland for Rs200 million but due to ill-trained staff, the two highly computerised snorkels went out of order and have been lying idle at a KMC workshop ever since.



The recently gifted fire engines are worth Rs150 million, according to deputy mayor Arshad Vohra. Explaining how these new vehicles are different from the ones KMC has, the corporation’s chief fire officer, Tehseen Siddiqui, told The Express Tribune that the new fire trucks had ladders that can easily be rotated in very narrow areas. He said that the ladder also has a trolley attached to it. “Once the ladder is extended, the trolley moves up and down,” he said, adding that due to this a lot of time can be saved. According to Siddiqui, the ladder can extend to reach a height of 40 metres.



Speaking about the faulty snorkels, KMC’s senior director of municipal services Masood Alam said that they were imported at a very high cost. Since the snorkels were highly computerised, he said that the systems got corrupted and could not be repaired here. “When foreign companies were asked to repair the system, they charged us Rs50 million,” he said, adding that due to financial reasons the vehicles could not be repaired.

For these new additions to the fire department, he said that eight fire officers were trained by the Japanese government and those officers will now be responsible for training their staff in Karachi.

Speaking at the ceremony, Japan’s acting consul-general, Yasuharu Shinto, said that they are immensely happy to gift these vehicles to the KMC and added that they would continue their cooperation with the KMC in the future. Meanwhile, Vohra said that the KMC is making efforts to develop its firefighting capacity.



Apart from these two new vehicles, he said that the Sindh government has also promised to give them a snorkel which can reach a height of 102 metres. That project, he said, is in the pipeline. On a question regarding maintenance of the trucks, he said that earlier their fire vehicles could not be maintained because the local government system was non-functional.

He assured that they are aware of their faulty vehicles and would make their fire fleet 100% functional.

Frozen accounts

On a question regarding KMC’s accounts being frozen by the Sindh government on Wednesday, Vohra responded that various councils have been merged in various districts throughout Sindh and this issue has to be resolved before the next provincial financial commission session.

The chief minister must be aware of the cheques already being released to Hindu employees before Diwali, he said. He warned that after two or three days, problems in running expenditures will begin to emerge.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2016.