The Service, therefore, urged the District Assemblies to continue to assist in providing the needed facilities to cover all the districts in the regions to ensure safe and secure environment for the citizenry.

Mr Julius Kunnuor, the Deputy Chief Fire Officer of GNFS, gave the assurance in a speech on behalf of Dr Albert Brown Gaisie, the Chief Fire Officer of the Service at the passing out ceremony of 303 Recruit Course 47 at the Fire Academy and Training School in Accra.

The recruits were taken through eight months of physical and theoretical training in various disciplines.He said the event is important because it would help improve on the international standard population ratio of the service since it was operating under stress as its human resource had witnessed a drastic reduction due to retirement and a high attrition rate.

“The staff strength of the service now stands at 6,757 personnel which brings a fire fighter to the population ratio to 1: 3995. This is far below the international standard of 1: 800, if we are to meet this standard then the service has to recruit additional 24,493 personnel’’ he said.

Dr Brown Gaisie said the service has 188 fire stations located within 150 designated political districts of the 216 assemblies, and that the Service was currently left with 66 political districts to extend the fire cover.He said the service has put in place strategic measures to transform the service to a more robust, accountable, efficient and professional in the discharge of its mandate.

He said the service had improved on its response time of 20 minutes to five minutes through the improvement of facilities on the existing fire stations and the provision of new fire stations across the country.Dr Gaisie said a total of 38 new fire stations were constructed and commissioned to ensure that every district was given a fire cover, adding that the service had seen a reduction in the number of fires and fire fatalities since January 2017.

“For the first quarter of 2016, a total of 2,469 fire outbreaks were recorded, and that during the same period in 2017, a total of 1,455 fire outbreaks, which represented 41 per cent decrease was recorded.A total of 2,967 fire outbreaks were recorded between January to August 2017 where 905 were minor fires and were out before the arrival of the personnel. The service had responded and managed 384 road traffic collisions and a total of 1,822 people were injured with 179 deaths recorded within”.

He said the Service has intensified its fire safety campaign and fire risk assessment at public and private places including high-rise premises to reduce fire outbreaks.

He commended the newly-recruited fire officers for their physical prowess and talents in passing through the intense competitive recruitment process and urged them to impart the knowledge acquired to improve service delivery.

The recruits were taught in subjects including fire science, fire safety, building construction, fire service management, fire drills, road traffic extrication, chemistry of combustion, fire fighting foam among others.

Mr Yakubu Nurudeen emerged the overall best recruit officer.