Ghana’s Anti-Bush Fire Law Is Not Deterring Enough To Stop Bush Fires – Anaglatey

Mr. Prince B. Anaglatey, the deputy Public Relation’s Officer of the Ghana National Fire Service has stated that the nation’s anti-bush fire law is not strong enough to fight bush-fires in the country.

He has therefore advised Ghanaians do to things that will prevent bush-fires from occurring especially during this harmattan period. Mr. Anaglatey said per the nation’s anti-bush fire law, PNDC law 229, a person who is caught setting up a bush fire should be fined not more than GHC10.00.

This he says is not deterring enough to help prevent bush fires. They have therefore set up fire fighters volunteers who will augment the effort of the personnel of the National Fire Service to educate the masses about the need to prevent fire outbreaks.

He said, the service trains these volunteers and gives the equipment to help prevent fire in case of any outbreak at a place where the fire service will take some time before getting there.

Commenting on the 72 fire outbreaks in the country within 6 days in this month, Mr. Anaglatey said the situation would have been worse if not for the intense fire education that is currently ongoing in the country. He said as we speak, fire service officers are at every part of the country educating Ghanaians on the need to prevent fire outbreak.

He added that in times like this, fire can easily break due to the weather conditions and pleaded with Ghanaians, churches, mosques, operators of pubs etc to put in place all necessary fire safety measures to help prevent and to reduce the number of outbreaks that will be engulfing the country.

Mr. Prince B. Anaglatey was speaking to the media during an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a new fire station and fire tender in the Akyemansa District.

Speaking at the ceremony, Dep. Chief Fire Officer Micheal Yarquah, director of safety of the National Fire Service who represented Chief Fire Officer (CFO) Albert Brown Gaisie said, out of the 26 Municipal and district assemblies in the Eastern Region, 3 of them do not have fire stations. He therefore pleaded with the chief executives of these 3 districts to be proactive and work hard to get fire stations for their districts.

He added that, the personnel of the service are not trained to fight fire alone but are trained to also be of help whenever there is any form of accident. He therefore charged the people of Akyemansa district not to relent on calling on the fire service whenever there is any form of accident anywhere.

On his part, the District Chief Executive of the District Hon. Tom Budu expressed delight over the establishment of the fire station in the district and promised the people that he will continue to work hard to get other necessary services such as the ambulance service into the district.