Over 5 homes burnt down, ENFRES blames understaffing

By Thokozani Mazibuko

Over five homes including, umphakatsi burnt down over the weekend and fire-fighters are blaming being understaffed as the main reasons why they could not control the fires as most of them have been temporarily relieved from their duties to prepare for the upcoming Fire Day celebration.

According to sources within the Eswatini National Fire, Rescue, and Emergency Service (ENFRES), who chose to remain anonymous in fear of victimisation, they were understaffed as most of their colleagues have been allegedly excused to prepare for the upcoming Fire Day, whose date has unfortunately not yet been announced yet.

This, they alleged has resulted in them not being able to attend to fire accidents which break out across the country whenever they were called upon by members of the public to do so, a scenario which played itself out even last year during the preparations of the Fire Day.
They alleged that so serious was the situation such that only four fire-fighters would be deployed to a shift, with one of them working in the control room.

“This means that only three fire personnel would be actively available to put out fires on such instances. When we receive calls from members of the public at the same time, reporting different fire incidents that have broken out across the country, we could only attend to one incident at a time, resulting in some structures burning down uncontrollable,” alleged the sources.

They pointed out that testament to this was that over five homes, including umphakatsi were burnt down over the weekend and they could not attend to the incidents as they were thin on the ground.

They pointed out that at Esigangeni area, a grass fire broke out and burnt down three houses, while another one burnt a house at Bahai area.

They stated that Ekupheleni area an undisclosed number of houses were also burnt by grass fires as well as at Lushikishini Mankayane area, where umphakatsi and some homes were burnt down.

They pointed out that they were worried that their inability to attend to the fire incidents, despite being called upon to do so, will be misinterpreted by members of the public, who might think that they were engaging on a go-slow strike due to their unpaid overtime.

“Even though it is an open secret that we are aggrieved that we have still not received our overtime monies, however, we understand our mission and therefore, we will never gamble with people’s lives and property by engaging on a strike while their properties were being destroyed by fires,” said the sources.

The sources mentioned that apart from the fire incidents, they were mandated to attend to road accidents as well, something which becomes extremely difficult for them of late since they were extremely understaffed.

They pointed out that the situation was so serious such that at one fire station situated in the Lubombo region, a fire-fighter had to attend to a fire incident all by himself.

“He took a horse and trailer truck and went out to put out a fire on his own without the support of other fire-fighters,” alleged the sources.

They mentioned that there was no need for their superiors to emulate police officers by calling upon fire-fighters to camp and prepare for the Fire Day.

This, they said, was because unlike the police force, fire-fighters were few in number and they did not have recruits like the police officers.
The fire-fighters mentioned that apart from being understaffed, the equipment’s that they were using was worn out.

“For example, most of the trucks that we are using have broken down while those who still functional are old,” said the sources.

ENFRES Public Relations Officer Mandla Dlamini confirmed that there were fire incidents which they could not attend to over the weekend.

However, he said this could not be blamed on ENFRES being understaffed due to the preparation of the Fire Day but rather he said members of the public were to be blamed for such unfortunate occurrences.

This, he said was because they discovered that most of the fires that they were attending to were because of members of the public’s negligence and failure to adhere to safety precautions.

“Most of the fires that we had to attend to did not break out due to natural causes, but they were started by people, hence members of the public should try to cooperate with ENFRES by refraining from deliberately starting these fires,

otherwise even if we could have 10 000 fire-fighters deployed at a fire station, they could not be able to attend to all these fires caused by people’s negligence,” he said.