What’s firefighting? An impossible task for Nepal’s ill-prepared municipalities
In course of 12 years, Fungling Bazaar has suffered huge losses in four major blazes. Somehow, Fungling municipality got a fire engine around last July, but that was the end of it. The fire engine has fallen into disuse and the municipality seems as ill-prepared as ever when it comes to firefighting.
These days, the municipality uses the fire engine to sprinkle water on the road.
On the other hand, 132 municipalities of the country are not even as lucky as Fungling: None of these municipalities has a fire engine. Even those municipalities that have fire engines are unable to operate them properly for want of funds and human resources.
Dense urban settlements are particularly susceptible to fire hazard. But, according to the Ministry of Local Development, only 85 out of 217 municipalities have fire engines.
In this bleak scenario, major incidents of fire are sure to cause huge loss of lives and property. Madhav Prasad Regmi, secretary at the ministry, says municipalities do not have funds to purchase fire engines.
“We have not been unable to provide grants to these municipalities to purchase the same,” the ministry concedes.
At present, 132 municipalities have forwarded a proposal for the procurement of fire engines, while others that have fire engines have demanded human resources required to fight fires.
The ministry provides up to Rs 58 lakh to each municipality for the purchase of fire engine. But it is in no position to provide such a huge sum to each municipality. Some municipalities have purchased heavy duty fire engines by adding their own funds to the grant, while some others have purchased fire engines of questionable standards by using the grant alone.
Lately, most of the municipalities have purchased Indian fire engines. These engines are not considered sound, technically. A high official at the ministry said municipalities have purchased low-quality fire engines due to obvious compulsions.
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