New Delhi: A veterinary officer has been the chief fire officer (CFO) of the Bhavnagar city in Gujarat since October 2019 and the fire department is massively understaffed, according to a Times of India report, highlighting the abject state of affairs in a state that has been ravaged by many hospital fires in the past few months.
According to the report, to fill the CFO post, a person requires a diploma or degree in fire engineering and 15 years experience as deputy CFO. Bhavnagar has not found any qualified persons, meaning that a senior veterinary officer of the Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation has been given the additional charge since October 2019.
This curious detail emerged in a meeting that was held last week at the urban development department to recruit fire officers to fill vacancies, based on the directives of the Gujarat high court.
BMC representative informed officials of the urban development department that the corporation has not had a qualified full-time CFO since 2006. “The charge of the CFO has gone to the garden department, audit department and the engineering department. Now, veterinary officer M.M. Hirpara is in charge of CFO we were told,” an official told the Times of India.
The city’s municipal commissioner M.A. Gandhi told the newspaper that the BMC did not have recruitment rules for CFOs until 2015. “These rules were framed following a HC direction. Even under the existing rules, there is no provision for direct recruitment of CFOs but it is still promotion based. Currently, there are no competent officers who could be promoted to this post as per rules,” he said.
Bhavnagar requires 180 firemen but only has 35, the report added. This is despite the fact that the BMC is tasked with providing additional fire safety forces to hazardous zones like the Alang shipbreaking yard. Three industrial clusters, a power plant and an IOC-Indane bottling plant are also in close proximity of the city and the corporation could be required to provide safety.
A senior urban development department official told the Times of India, “We analyzed how even the four nagarpalikas in Bhavnagar district which have just one mini fire tender each employ sanitation workers to operate fire tenders. These nagarpalikas too are dependent on BMC for help.”
Many instances of fires have been reported at COVID-19 hospitals in Gujarat over the past few months. According to one report, seven fires were reported in a span of three months in the state, resulting in the death of at least 13 people.