Reservists get their answers

Disaster and Emergency Services (DEMS) spokesman William Ntladi explains the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) generally focuses on empowering the youth with necessary skills across the city as part of the strategy to alleviate unemployment and poverty amongst its communities.

Learnership and Reserve Force programmes are two separate entities within DEMS; each one has got its pre-requisites as per council policies and the Fire Brigade Services Act.

The learnership programme was launched by the EMM mayor in January 2016 with the objective of developing youth with experiential skills in the Emergency Services fraternity.

The main purpose of the programme is to empower students with career skills training them to be employable.

All applicants were given equal opportunity during the intake accordance to the criterion and those who complied with the requirements were nominated and given the chance to prove themselves.

During the duration of learning, they all received a monthly stipend.

The reserve force programmeis of higher category in comparison with learnerships.

As per the Fire Brigade Services Act, reserve force members are appointed with full qualifications to be part-time firefighters.

Their positions in the service are also policy driven.

They also receive a monthly stipend in accordance to their responsibilities.

For KwaThema Fire Station new employed personnel are from the Reserve Force Programme of the department which is a pool of potential candidates for permanent firefighters.

Kwatsaduza was well represented with a total of 41 candidates during the intake.

Selection was based on qualifications, physical assessment, oral interview and driver evaluation. Subsequent to the process, some candidates fell off.

The following were the reasons for the 41 members from Kwatsaduza area:

• Unsuccessful interviews.

• Unsuccessful driving evaluations.

• Some didn’t meet minimum requirements.

• Some were disqualified for submission of fraudulent qualifications.

• Some resigned from the Reserve Force programme due to personal reasons.

• Nine were successful for permanent appointment.

The staff complement in the station is 40 firefighters, four shift managers and a station manager. This excludes the general workers and reserve force members and learnership students who are busy with their experiential training.

In all 29 fire stations across the City of Ekurhuleni, 114 firefighters are from Kwatsaduza area.

The City doesn’t employ people just because of they are from a specific area but focuses on the broader Metropolitan.