The National Chief Fire Officer of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) William Acquaye-Brown has hinted that very soon, senior officers who attended promotion interviews in November 2008 but had not been promoted, will soon receive their promotion letters. Speaking to this reporter in an interview in his office regarding the delay in promoting the said officers, Mr. Acquaye-Brown appealed to the aggrieved personnel to exercise restraint, saying that the problems that characterised the promotion interviews had been resolved and assured them that those who deserve to be promoted will in a little while be promoted. Some aggrieved senior officers within the Service who were raising red flags and cataloguing series of issues confronting them, contended that their promotions had been stalled, and claimed that they attended a promotional interview in 2008 but did not know their fate regarding their promotions. “During the latter part of 2008, there was what was termed as ‘panic promotion,’ which the former Chief Fire Officer, Felix Kwame Ferkah had to hurriedly promote some officers who were not qualified to be promoted. Later on a letter came from the Ministry of the Interior last year nullifying their promotions. “But we are of the view that once those promotions have been nullified, those of us who are qualified should be promoted but we are being kept in the dark,” the aggrieved officers lamented. Responding to their claims, the Chief Fire Office, who corroborated their assertion, stated that the then Chief Fire Officer, Felix Kwame Ferkah followed the due process by requesting the Fire Service Council to give an approval so that areas that had been declared vacant could be filled. He said upon getting the green light from the Council, a three-member panel comprising a representative each from the Public Service Commission and the Ministry of The Interior as well as the Director in-charge of Administration of the GNFS was set up. Mr. Acquaye-Brwon indicated that whilst the interviews were on-going, Mr. Ferkah started releasing promotion letters to some personnel even though the panel had not submitted any report to that effect to him. According to him, the move did not go down well with some of the personnel, especially those who attending the promotion interviews and hence, they raised an alarm demanding to know under what basis some were being promoted despite the fact that they were qualified to be promoted. “When the chance came for me as a Chief Fire Officer, I studied the process and realised that it was a wrong move and so, my first major assignment as the Chief Fire Officer was to nullify those promotion since it was marred with fraudulent. However, because of the process, it affected those who were genuinely qualified. Those who were qualified had to know about the results of the interviews. Council has met and finalised everything of the promotion interviews and very soon the results will be made public so that they can heave a sigh of relief,” Mr. Acquaye-Brown stated. Information available revealed that five years ago, a similar thing happened to 250 Assistant Divisional Fire Officers Grade I, who attended promotional interviews but only 40 of them were promoted Divisional Fire Officer Grade III, a situation the officers claimed was marred with illegality. It was gathered that this development is still creating uneasy tension among the 210 officers who were not promoted four years and had to wait for their junior officers to join them in their ranks. A worrying revelation is that there are instances where some officers have been serving on some particular ranks for about 15 years, and this has made the top now very ‘heavy’ and this is thus affecting the promotion of others. Our investigations disclosed that in 2002, the conditions of service for the GNFS were promulgated but up till now some aspects have not been implemented. Allowances such as acting, professional, study, salary advance and leave, have never seen daylight in the Fire Service circle. With regards to responsibility allowance, which is supposed to be paid to heads of departments, district fire officers, and regional commanders, this is rather pegged to the ranks of Divisional Officer Grade II to Chief Fire Officer only. Another issue is that the human resource directorate is non-functional. No service training for fire personnel and this has resulted in operational lapses. With regards to recruitment of personnel for the Service, our investigations revealed that some of them are mostly foot soldiers of some political parties that are in government and as such, most of them are not trainable and this is said to have negatively affected the Service in terms of fire fighting and other duties as assigned to them. The GNFS, by virtue of its mandate in accordance with Act 537 is supposed to organise public fire education programmes, which is aimed at creating awareness on the dangers and hazards of fire to the general public. But the Chief Fire Officer has mentioned that a committee had been put in place to review the condition of service and to match it with current trend, saying that the committee had so far met five times. Mr. Acquaye-Brwon assured the personnel that after the review, most of the afore-mentioned issues will be addressed, if not all, emphasising that the committee has been charged to critically look at the issues, especially after working with the condition of service for about six years. Credit: Innocent Samuel Appiah/The Heritage