The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), on Wednesday, January 15, deployed personnel and a fire tender to the Zenu market in the Kpone-Katamanso metropolis.

The deployment was part of the measures President John Dramani Mahama announced to address the recent increase in market fires across the country.

Deployment of the fire personnel and equipment enables the GNFS to respond quickly to such fires, which often occur at night.

Assistant Divisional 1 (ADO1) Sosu Senyo, the officer-in-charge of Katamanso Fire Station, who led the team to the market, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the visit was to patrol the market in line with the president’s directives.

ADO1 Senyo sid the market has security on standby and that upon arrival, the personnel went around to check if traders had left pockets of fires that needed to be attended to.

“We’ve gone around to check if there are pockets of fires that have been set and left so that we attend to them, but there are none,” he said.

He said they noticed that nobody cooks food around the market and recommended that other markets should emulate that to prevent fires.

He also advised traders not to leave naked fires around and should also use professionals to wire their stalls instead of contracting unqualified persons to just tap into the grid.

Touching on perceptions of residents on the GNFS, he said, “Some residents came round doubting if we had water in the tender, so we opened the valve for them to see.”

He said while they were working towards preventing fires, measures such as regular hydrant water flow must also be in place for quick response should a fire occur.

ADO1 Senyo called on the Ghana Water Company to service the water hydrants to make it easy for them to fight fires, instead of them travelling to Ashaiman and its environs to refill the fire tenders when attending to emergencies.