By Mustapha Jarju
The Gambia Fire and Rescue Services (GFRS) has revealed that 823 (eight hundred and twenty-three) fire incidents happened in the country in 2021, adding that a chunk of the incidents happened within the Kanifing Municipality which recorded a total of three hundred and three (303).
Speaking to The Voice exclusively, Mr Pateh Gibba, public relation officer of The Gambia Fire and Rescue Services said: “the Minister said it is the highest number of fire incident, so we are putting all efforts together to make sure it goes down. And the areas that we are having increase in number of fire outbreaks are the places we are interested in, which is the KMC with a combination of three (3) fire stations and the one that registered the most fire is Serekunda,” area.
According to him, he cannot recall the total amount of fire outbreaks in other regions but the most affected one that aroused the attention of the public and the fire fighter is the KMC with highest registered number of fire destructions in the previous year.
Meanwhile, he dismissed allegations that fire officers will go for an incident without water, saying “fire fighters are always in full gear.”
“There is no fire fighter that will fight a fire without been with the water and the PPEs, because you cannot fight fire without the water, but we cannot be immune to allegations as long as we are serving the people and they need our services.
“The government is in support of the GFRS in a very large extent with the partnership they have built with AVON based in England and these are people supporting the fire service through the Gambia Government. If you say they don’t buy us fire appliances of course they don’t buy us fire appliances for a long period of time but they contributed immensely in making sure that the partnership is strong and making sure vehicles are also coming into the Gambia,” he added.
He called on the public to put all hands together to solve a problem and avoid the mare and so called allegations and faces the reality so that the fire fighters can change peoples’ life. “Allegations can never solve our problems and we will always be there for the Gambian people.”