BAUKO, Mountain Province – Local officials are now calling on the administrators of the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) to fulfill their long overdue promise of putting up a fire station in the property that was donated by the local government specifically for the said purpose.
Mayor Abraham B. Akilit expressed disappointment over the non-implementation of the construction of a municipal fire station, a long standing commitment that traces back to the previous administration, saying that he does not understand why the BFP rejected earlier proposals to download the funds to the local governments that are capable of handling the same so that the project could commence the soonest and for residents to benefit from the presence of a fire station that is strategically located within a growing urban center.
“We cannot understand why the BFP cannot implement the construction of a municipal fire station when we complied with the prescribed requirements to allow the local government to avail of the funds provided for the put up of a municipal fire station. They seem to forget such commitment because we are already fed up following up the matter and being given the run around,” Mayor Akilit stressed.
The local chief executive criticized the BFP for trying to commission a lone contractor for the ambitious project of putting up fire stations in all municipalities in the country wherein the first attempt to bid out the project was a virtual failure because there was no alleged taker for such a huge project.
Further, when the BFP decided to bid out the implementation of project by islands, there was still no taker for the ambitious project of the agency that caused the serious delays in the realization of having a well-equipped fire station for the locality.
According to him, the best solution to the problem being encountered by the BFP is to allow capable local governments to implement the project so that the construction of the fire station is well supervised and monitored and public funds are not wasted for substandard infrastructure projects that might be built through the highly centralized scheme.
Earlier, the local government donated over 400 meters of land within its property as its counterpart to allow the BFP to allocate some P7 million for the construction of a fire station suitable to the current terrain in the place.
However, Akilit revealed that since the local government submitted its counterpart for possible funding, nothing has been heard about how the project will be implemented except for the fact that it was bidded by the central office and that there were no takers for the nationwide project of putting up fire stations in towns that no not have fire stations.
The BFP also committed to equip the fire station with a state-of-the-art fire truck and firefighting equipment as well as the needed personnel to complete the overall package that was geared towards providing the local governments with firefighting capability for emergency purposes.
By HENT
