GNFS triggers national discourse on ending bushfires
The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has held a stakeholders forum on ending bushfire outbreaks with a call for support to ensure that the menace is completely reduced.
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It explained that bushfires had been a significant contributor to national food scarcity and its damage to the economy was very huge while it also retrogressed all the individual and collective efforts put together for nation-building.
The Chief Fire Officer of the GNFS, Julius A. Kuunuor, at a meeting held at the GNFS Headquarters in Accra last Thursday, said the GNFS could no longer continue to sit on the fence and allow the yearly menace to continue.
He, therefore, said it was time for the service to re-strategise with innovative ways to prevent and control bushfire outbreaks.
The meeting brought together individuals from the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education, the Forestry Commission of Ghana, the Ghana Meteorological Agency, the National Insurance Commission, as well as other officers from the GNFS.
It was held to herald the service’s 2023 Bushfire Prevention Campaign, which is scheduled to take place in October this year.
Bushfire statistics
From the yearly statistics of bushfires in the country, CFO Kuunuor said the months of December, January, February, March and April were the peak periods.
He said those were the periods where the harmattan set in and hunters engaged in group hunting while some traditional areas performed the Fire Festival.
He added that about 99 per cent of bushfires were man-induced, caused either deliberately or non-deliberately through hunting, festivals and arson, among others.
Fire-free Ghana
CFO Kuunuor said the focus of the service now was to ensure a fire-free Ghana through intensive public fire safety education.
He said it was, therefore, determined to meet its target of reducing fire outbreaks by 60 per cent by December this year.
He noted that it could only be possible by aggressively embarking on house-to-house, as well as radio and television, education programmes on fire safety precaution campaigns nationwide.