Jakarta city to set up fire-fighting academy

Antara News, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 20:11 WIB

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Jakarta city administration plans to set up a fire-fighting academy to improve the quality of the national capital`s anti-fire human resources, a spokesman said.

The academy would admit students from anywhere in the country and educate them up to Diploma III level.

"In the future, this academy will hopefully become a model other regions in the country can emulate to obtain competent and skilled fire fighters," Paimin Napitupulu, head of Jakarta cirty`s fire-fighting office, said here Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters after receiving a delegation from the Malaysian fire-fighting agency at his office, he said the Jakarta city administration would cooperate with the Malaysian fire-fighting agency and three Jakarta universities to compose the curricula and find the teaching staff for the planned academy.

It would be located in Ciracas, a suburb on Jakarta`s southern outskirts in an area that was formerly used for basic military training.

Paimin said the academy was needed to solve Jakarta`s chronic shortage of trained fire-fighters which now stood at about 4,000 men.

At present the city`s fire-fighting department had a force of 2, 847 men whereas the ideal number to serve Jakarta`s population of 10 million was about 7,521 men, he said.

The shortage of fire-fighters was evident in the field where a fire truck that normally should be manned by six men was in reality operated by only three men, Densely-populated Jakarta is rather prone to fires mostly caused by short circuits in inadequate or sub-standard power line installations.

In January 2010 alone, a total of 47 fires broke out in the Indonesian capital. As many as 30 of the fires were caused by electricity short circuits and total material damage was estimated to total Rp11.31 billion.

The January fires made 437 people or 35 families homeless, killed one person and injured seven others.