By Melinda Moyo | The City Of Harare should with immediate effect implement the following resolutions so as to protect the image of the city, fight Brain-Drain & and have an improved service delivery by its Fire & Ambulance Services Dept.

1)The City Should Provide Better Salaries, In this case move the grade of firefighters and ambulance technician from 11 to 9 with immediate effect.
2)The Management & Some Senior personal in the emergency services dept should be relieved off duty & pave way for new blood& enegertic people
3)All Fire Sub-stations & other council properties should be equipped with solar systems for lighting as well as refurbished.
4)The Canteen Services be improved to suit our emergency services personal or be abolished & new players introduced
5)Provision of transport to & from work for all council employees
6) Emergency Services personal risk allowances be increased by not less than 100%
7) Barbaric Behaviours & Mistreatment of fire & ambulance personal(Unnecessary punishments and all day long donkey work) by their seniors be abolished with immediate effect. Other alternative to instill discipline be implemented.
8)The City should purchase more ambulances & fire appliances, not waiting for donations as is the case ( from operation Florian).
9)All Fire stations be provided with cooking staff and call room personal, not what is currently happening in some of the stations
10) Decentralisation of fire dept, a sub-station should be fully equipped with a station officer in place & his or her juniors. Fire appliances & ambulances be readily available there not the current state whereby a sub-station only has one appliance available.
11) Recruitment should be done according to book, and the City should not recruit people to be taken by other countries e.g UAE & Saudi Arabia, that’s why we are saying improve their salaries & meet world payment gauges.
12)The Emergency ServicesDept be treated as a major priority in City’s budgets.
13)Corrupt Fire, Ambulance servi & Municipal Police top management be closely monitored.
14) All council vehicles be given a City’s white plate, including those being used by top management
15)The City should drill boreholes on all council properties, not the current state whereby we see fire appliances fetching water in containers for other station use, the public will see the City as using that water to fight fires, we say no to all that.
16) All council employees be given identity cards, with immediate effect.
17)The training of recruits & moving them to other depts should be abolished, as this will leave a gap again & it’s a wastage of resources as in training someone & then just change them to other departments.
18)The City should meet salary payment deadlines.

These are some of the things the City should implement with immediate effect, so that the City will not lose its employees in the Fire & Ambulance Dept to other countries,So As an Analyst Fighting for sanity in the City I would like to see service being improved by the fire & ambulance dept, for a better & quality service as well as improved employee morale. So I say once again no to barbaric treatment & I’ll practices to our firefighters(punishments & non-work related activities), they risk for us so lets treat them with respect

Melinda Moyo
(Independant Writer & Analyst)