Chief Fire Officer of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Mr. Albert Brown Gaisie, has said that from today [Monday, July 17, 2017] taskforces will be deployed to the ministries and other government institutions to check if safety audit recommendations have been complied with.
He disclosed this while speaking to the press after they had gone round to perform their inspections as expected of them.
Though it is mandatory for all government institutions to acquire fire certificates, Mr. Brown Gaisie lamented that it was unfortunate that most of these agencies were not adhering to fire safety precautions and as such do not have the fire safety certificate.
He added that when there is fire outbreak, government institutions especially lose out on valuable archives, “because most of their works are in hard copies.”
These papers, he stated, sometimes contain huge financial contracts and loan agreements which do not have backups due to their formats.
According to them, cost or budget constraints should not be an excuse for any agencies not to have fire certificates or complying with fire safety precautions
He said “some of the precautionary measures do not need any huge sums of money; it is a question of being proactive to ensure that we see to the safety of these agencies.”
He noted that they have done the safety audit for these institutions and no one has an excuse whatsoever not to comply with recommendations given them as they are going to embark and enforce these measures.
Mr. Brown Gaisie, therefore, challenged state institutions to be ready for the exercise.
“…these taskforces will come to address them and discuss their issues and help them to know how they can get the certificates,” he said.
He said “the laws are there and the laws do not exempt government institutions from not having fire certificates or not complying with safety precautions.”
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