Lack of resources, modern equipment and coordination among different government agencies is creating hurdles in management of disasters in NWFP and in prevention of the losses of lives and property in the province. These shortcomings have been identified by experts and officials of the departments of Civil Defence both at federal and district levels in the provincial metropolis.
According to officials, although government is leaving no stone unturned in promotion of the skills in the field of firefighting, rescue and first aid, these shortcomings are making all these efforts fruitless.
The federal government is providing Rs 5 million for its civil defence office in NWFP, of which a large part is spent on payment of salaries of its 32 employees and some other matters. The department also has to purchase equipment from the fund given by the federal government.
The equipment is used for imparting training to the personnel nominated by police, military and volunteers from different educational institutions. The district civil defence office, working under the supervision of the District Coordination Officer (DCO), is responsible for supervising rescue and relief operation. At the time of emergency also it faces the same problems of the lack of funds. The annual budget of the office is below Rs 3 million and that also used for payment of the salary to 21 employees.
The matter of the lack of coordination among various agencies and civil defence further aggravates the situation at the time of emergency. The volunteers of the civil defence have no specialised identification due to which police does not allow it to join the rescue the operations.
"Our volunteers reached the Sarki Gate fire incident before other institutions, but due to the lack of identification they were barred from joining the extinguishing operation that claimed lives of five children of the same family," said Waheed-ul-Haq, District Civil Defence Officer (DCDO) Peshawar. The trained volunteers would have saved the lives of the victim, but police did not allowed them to join the rescue operation.
Similarly, he said that more than 200 volunteers of the organisation did not participated in the rescue operation after deadly earthquake of October 2005 in Hazara Region of the province due to the lack of the facility for their transportation.
He said that majority of the multi-storey buildings of the district have no proper fire extinguishing equipment. He particularly mentioned Deans Trade Centre and State Life Building having no such facility. Furthermore, he said that the district government also lacks building or concrete cutting machineries for use at the time of emergency.
The government providing nothing for procurement of the equipment, However, the federal government run department working under the Ministry of Interior has so far trained more than 20,000 people from both public and private sector in fire-fighting, rescue and first aid treatment.
The department has compile the record of all those who had received training from the training institutions of the civil defence. The department has also launched a number of initiatives for generating skilled manpower for combating emergency situation like earthquake, flash floods and eruption of fire.
"We had launched a number of skill promotion programmes for the employees of police, paramilitary forces and fire-fighters and had trained more than 20,000 people in first aid and fire fighting," Mahzar Siddiqui, Commandant, Civil Defence, NWFP told Business Recorder.
The department, he said, is working at three different levels of federal, provincial and district with sole objective of minimum human losses at the emergency and disasters. The institution is also responsible for checking the fire-fighting and first-aid facilities at the industrial units for strengthening the financial health of the country.
The responsibility of the federal department is the formulation of the policies and its implementation through provincial and district level offices. Each factory is required to have its own department of civil defence for provision of first-aid or pre-hospital treatment to the workers at the time of the occurrence of any incident.
The training, the commandant said being provided in head of fire-fighting, rescue and handling of casualties. The institution has introduced special fireman courses for combating fire-fighting for minimising the number of casualties in the time of the fire eruption while rescue course for the evacuation of those trapped in the buildings after the occurrence of the disaster.
For the promotion of skill, the department has established four technical schools one each at provincial headquarters while National Institute of Fire Technology is providing special training to fire-fighters for extinguishing of fire. The department is also running Civil Defence Academy with special courses on disaster management. The academy has introduced special bomb disposal training for security and law-enforcement agencies and use of special equipment in this regard.
The other training courses provided by the academy included Women Mobile Training Teams, under which women staffers of the department visit girls' colleges, schools and industrial homes and trained in prevention of injuries and extinguishing of fire.
The minimising of the human losses requires equipment, which the institution was lacking. However, he said that they had made all-out efforts for training people on the latest equipment. He said that the institution has imported building cutters from the United States, but it also used only for training purposes and not used for operational matters. Similarly, he said that they also have life scanning equipment to minimise casualties.
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