Kalyan, Dombivli residents can volunteer to fight fires

Kalyan

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If you are a resident of Kalyan or Dombivli, you can volunteer to be part of the civic body’s a disaster management team.

Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) has invited applications from individuals as the fire department has decided to form a volunteers’ group.

The fire department of KDMC has been planning to recruit more staffers for the past several years because the present staff is not enough to tackle disasters in the twin cities of Kalyan and Dombivli. However, the recruitment process is lengthy and due to lack of response, it could not be done so far.

“There are several individuals who come forward and help the department during disasters. The example is the recent floods. The volunteers, however, are not aware of the proper techniques to help people during disasters,” said Dilip Gund, chief fire officer of KDMC.

The department will train the individuals before appointing them as volunteers.

“We will train them for the job. This way, we will have more manpower and better service,” added Gund.

The KDMC fire department not only attends fire incidents but also assists in rescue operations in building collapses and drowning cases.

As per the fire officials, the volunteers will be initially appointed on an experiment basis.

“This is the first time we have taken steps to improve our service. The volunteers will be given preference whenever there is recruitment in the department,” said Gund.

The fire department will select 500 volunteers among the applications. The selected volunteers will be trained for seven days and will be allowed to work for the department for the next seven days. After 14 days of training and working, the department will finalise volunteers based on their performance.

Whenever there is an emergency in the city, the volunteers will be called. The volunteers will be paid for their service. They will be paid ₹500 for eight hours of work. The volunteers will be appointed ward-wise from the ten wards in Kalyan-Dombivli.

As per the fire officials, a team of 32 staffers, including 21 firemen, is required for one fire station. The 32 employees will work in three shifts a day in a group of 8 (comprising one fire officer, a driver and 5 firemen).

At present, there are only 12 fireman and around three fire officers working at a fire station.

There is a requirement of around 1,200 firemen to deal with fire incidents and other emergencies in the two cities; however, the department has only around 100 staffers, including fire officers. There are 11 fire tenders while the requirement is around 25 to 37 fire tenders.