Fire service corporatises training

THE Papua New Guinea Fire Service is corporatising its fire training to generate revenue, says chief fire officer Bill Roo.
Roo said that in Port Moresby on Friday when handing out certificates to eight recipients of the basic fire fighter training.
The eight are from the Kumul Petroleum Academy (KPA).
“There should be a corporate response in such things like emergency, we all look after one and another,” Roo said.
“It is a challenge for our corporate clients to come along and this is the only way to suppress fires at the earlier stages,” Roo said.
“Having basic fire-fighting training will help to suppress fires before the fire service arrives at the scene.”
Roo acknowledged KPA for seeing the importance of fire safety as an institution.
He said it was his commitment to shift the training to non-uniform personnel as well.
“We have two components, uniform and non-uniform personnel, so it is my intention to train the non-uniform to become volunteer fire fighters, meaning that you already know the basics of firefighting so that you can become a volunteer fire fighter, not only at your work place but at your home as well.”
KPA training centre manager Julian Betts said: “For me it is very straight-forward, fire is a serious business, so I need to get serious about training.”
It was obvious for me to start with the professionals, and I was very pleased to see PNG Fire Service accept us in the training scheme,”
A trainee, Walter Tokam, said he and his colleagues were challenged during the entire three-day training.