By Nico van Burick
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has confirmed that the budget for the government’s firefighting programme, Working on Fire (WoF), has been cut by 17%.
Peter Mbelengwa, spokesperson for the department, said the National Treasury had cut budgets over the medium term across the whole government, and the cuts in the department had the biggest impact on environmental programmes funded through the expanded public works programmes.
He said WoF was also affected by the cuts in the previous financial year, as well as this one, and the reduction is in line with the department’s own smaller budget.
Johann “Savage” Breytenbach, manager of the Free State Umbrella Fire Protection Association, said although they have not been officially informed of any budget cuts, they are aware of funding problems.
“The Working on Fire programme is in a very delicate situation at the moment, but I don’t know what the exact problems are. New staff are not being hired and purchasing of vehicles is also affected.”
Last year during the fire season he pointed out that where they previously had 23 vehicles at their disposal, including 12 fire engines, in August they only had 10 vehicles for the 25 WoF teams in the Free State, which consisted of approximately 500 firefighters.
The lack of transport meant they couldn’t always send teams to fight fires. “There are now many obstacles that weren’t there before, and the WoF’s performance is definitely worse than it used to be. The department makes it very difficult for us to make institutional arrangements and coordinate our work, because you don’t always know where you stand with them. The communication is just poor.”
Regarding the fire danger in the Free State, Breytenbach says it is still wet and green in many parts at the moment, but he expects fires to start occuring in the second half of June.
In a voice note, Eric Stoch, chairman of the Northwest Umbrella Fire Protection Association, also informed his colleagues he had heard from his local WoF staff there was no money to recruit people for vacant positions. He said his own team consists of 12 people, which is the minimum to go out to a fire. If one is absent, no firefighting can be done in the area of Baberspan.
He said he had heard the state had cut the budget by 25% and the firefighters would also be reduced accordingly. He would like to raise these issues with questions in parliament with the help of his contacts.
According to the WoF’s website, it has 5 000 participants, of whom 94% are youth, 31% are women and 3% are disabled.
