Silas: Use free Fire Service hotline wisely

By ARMSTRONG SAIYAMA
PAPUA New Guinea Fire Service chief fire officer Isaac Silas is calling on the public to respect the fire emergency numbers. 
He said the fire emergency numbers were vital free calls to save people’s lives and properties from fires.
“Our free calls emergency numbers are for genuine calls only,” Silas
said.
He urged the public to stop abusing the fire emergency numbers.
“There are some calls to our fire stations that are malicious in nature,” he said.
Silas added that people were misusing the fire emergency numbers for false alarms.
He said that the non-genuine callers were taking the spaces of the genuine callers that were in the critical need of the fire service.
He said such calls had disturbed their operations.
“If the non-genuine callers ring, they are taking up the spaces because when all the calls come, they are placed in a queue, that disturbs the genuine calls for emergency,” Silas said.
He said the fire fighters timely responses to contain fires depended on them receiving the calls from the public on time.