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View all search resultsFire department understaffed, poorly equipped
The Jakarta Fire Department operates with less than half the required personnel and only a quarter of the required equipment, an official said
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T
he Jakarta Fire Department operates with less than half the required personnel and only a quarter of the required equipment, an official said.
Fire chief Paimin Napitupulu said that the agency was losing firefighters at an alarming rate as more officers retired. He said this put a strain on a department that already had far less equipment than it needed to cope with the frequent blazes in the sprawling metropolis of high-rise buildings and slums.
“Our resource shortage has become a very urgent matter,” Paimin said recently.
The city has only 2,952 firefighters posted in municipalities and district offices, whereas it needed 7,500 to cover the 650 square kilometers of Jakarta, Paimin said.
He added that the department only had 137 fire engines (a quarter of what was needed), 11 ladder trucks instead of the required 44, and 11 emergency response vehicles and ambulances instead of the required 92.
Paimin said up to 195 firefighters left the job each month.
“We recently recruited 450 new people, but it’s not enough to make up for the number of those leaving,” he said.
Paimin said he had made a request to the Jakarta Regional Employment Agency for 1,000 new firefighters, but that only 450 passed the 2010 civil servant entrance exam.
Last year, the city allocated Rp 421 billion (US$46.7 million) for the fire department, a decrease from Rp 470 billion in 2009.
Pelita Harapan University civil engineering expert Manlian Ronald Simanjuntak told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that the city should immediately address the shortage in personnel and equipment, calling it a “sad fact”.
He said the understaffed fire department was not the only issue the city administration faced, as it also had to take measures to protect residents and buildings from fires.
“These measures include how buildings are managed under comprehensive spatial planning guidelines, attention to building material and, more importantly, how residents respond to fires,” Manlian said.
Critics said unregulated rapid construction, especially of high-rise buildings in Jakarta in the last few years coupled with the capital’s already lax fire safety regulations increased the threat of fire.
