WEST MAMPRUSI ASSEMBLY FORMS FIRE VOLUNTEER SQUAD

(Daily Graphic, Jan 12, 2012, page 20)

THE West Mamprusi District Assembly has constituted an eighty-member fire volunteer squad to check bush fires that are threatening to ravage farms and vegetations in Mishio and Zua, two farming communities in the district.

Each year, during the dry season, fires are set to vegetations, mostly by hunters who are in pursuit of rodents. In the process, these fires cause damage to farms and large plantations, thereby resulting in a huge loss to the farmers.

The formation of fire control volunteer squads is therefore intended to address the menace of bush fires as these volunteers have been tasked to police the area to ensure non-burning and also put a stop to fires that have already been started.

With technical support from the Ghana National Fire Service, the volunteers underwent a six-day training programme in wildfire control, including practical lessons, such as the creation of fire belts and military drilling exercise in response to fire outbreaks.

They were later presented with fire fighting equipment namely Wellington boots, protective clothing, cutlasses and hand gloves.

The institution of the fire volunteer squad forms part of the implementation of a project intended to mitigate the effects of climate change in parts of the West Mamprusi district.

The project, christened ‘Fighting climate change through reforestation’, is being funded by the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF), a German-based foundation and implemented in partnership with the assembly.

At the end of the training programme, the Co-ordinator of the project, Mr Issifu Sulemana said the fire volunteer squad would seek to protect the area from any fires, adding that it would be senseless to plant trees and allow fires to destroy them.

He noted that preventing bush fires is everyone’s business and therefore urged the entire community to join hands with the eighty volunteers to control bushfires in their communities.

The District Chief Executive (DCE) for West Mamprusi, Mr Adam Yussif cautioned the inhabitants of the two communities not to start any fires to the bushes because we are in the peak of the dry season and therefore any fire could get out of hand and cause damage to farms.

He urged the fire volunteers to use the knowledge, skills and the equipment acquired to manage and adequately control wild fires in their various communities.

The DCE also entreated the two communities not to farm close to the banks of the Volta River, but to endeavour to pay attention to the trees planted along their part of the Volta River banks in order to give it maximum protection since their livelihoods were directly connected to the river.

The chief of Zua, Zua-Naa thanked the assembly, the HSF and their partners for their immense support to the two communities and reiterated their commitment in ensuring that bush fires are actually controlled in their various communities.