Gauteng’s trio metros are experiencing a shortfall of fire trucks and firefighters, according to media reports.

Head of the Gauteng Disaster Management Centre, Tshepo Motlhale, confirmed with 702 that the province has a total of 92 trucks, with only 57 in good condition.

He said there’s already a shortage of 30 fire trucks.

Reports by the media revealed that the City of Joburg Emergency Management Services (EMS) has 30 fire stations, but is only operating on half (15) of its truck supply to respond to emergencies.

Sowetan LIVE reported that Joburg EMS attends to an estimated 300 fires per month, which affects its required response time of 14 minutes

Motlhale further revealed that the country’s chief economic hub has 4642 firefighters working, however faces a harrowing shortage of 2104 positions.

Motlhale admitted that South Africa has a serious shortage of firefighters, including meeting the firefighter ratio standard.

“If we use an analysis, we still have a serious challenge meeting those standards, and it's not only in Gauteng, but across the country,“ said Motlhale.

The ratio in SA standard requires one firefighter per 1000 population.

This means the province should have approximately 15 000 firefighters, as it has a population of more than 15 million people.

Although he did not give an accurate number, Motlhale also revealed Gauteng is grappling a shortage of inspectors which needs an urgent solution.

He furthermore attributed Gauteng’s shortfall in fire trucks and firefighters to funding constraints, which has affected the response in services.

“The state of our services in the province is not looking good,” he said.

He also mentioned maintaining fire equipment and personnel will be expensive.

“If you look at how the cost drivers for car services are structured, it is highly cost-orientated, with the cost of fire fighting vehicles and equipment quite high. Training costs are also quite high.

“The other main point that we have, even if we can have engines, repairs and maintenance of the fire service fleet is quite exorbitant, and also tends to also affect our overall commissioning of the fire engines that we have in the province,” he said.

Motlhale affirmed that measures have been put in place to address the ongoing fire truck shortage by strategically deploying resources in high risk areas.

“The state of our services in the province is not looking good, but there are measures that are taking place to improve the status quo.

“To turn around the function, we have started a programme looking into reorganising the entire function, so that we can overcome all those challenges,” said Motlhale.

The Star

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