Working on Fire awareness programme helps to curb fires

Provincial chairperson for Public Information, Education and Relations (PIER), Paul Motsepe, based at the West Rand District Municipality’s Fire Department, applauded the Working on Fire (WoF) programme for helping to bring down the number of fires by creating fire awareness.

“WoF programme’s fire-awareness team led by Lerato Mokwena has made huge strides in educating our communities in fire safety,” Motsepe said.

The programme invests lots of resources and time to educate and in turn save the lives of community members, and Motsepe said this has helped to bring down the number of fire fatalities in the West Rand area too.

“We were fire hot spots; however, fire-awareness education interventions have been instrumental in curbing fires in squatter camps and on farms. Their teams assisted landowners to burn fire breaks before the fire season,” he said.

Motsepe explained that the impact of their fire-awareness drive has been tremendous in ensuring lives, the environment and properties are protected and saved.

“The programme that was implemented on the West Rand assisted the community of the area to be fire-conscious, and veld fires, fires in informal settlements and at formal dwellings have decreased as well,” Motsepe explained.

General Manager for WoF in Gauteng, Stephen Boyes, said the key tool to fight fires is awareness education as it is part of integrated fire management.

“We are glad and grateful that our impact is being felt in that the lives of our people are changing and are being saved. Winter is here, we don’t wish to see loss of life or property due to fires,” said Boyes.

He added that at this stage a quarter of the fires in the province occur on the West Rand, instead of half the number as in the past two years.

Out of 367 fires recorded from April 2019 to 31 March 2020, 80 were recorded on the West Rand.