The Ashanti regional office of the Fire Service has stepped up coverage of fire safety education to stem the tide of fires in the region.

Statistics compiled across the country suggests that even though fire incidents reduced by 46%, by the first quarter of 2017, the Ashanti region recorded the highest number of fire cases in the country with a total of 743 and 343 in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Sharing latest figures with Ultimate News, the Ashanti regional Public Relations Officer of the Fire Command Assistant Divisional Officer 1, Desmond Ackah disclosed that as at the end of May 2017, fire incidents had reduced by half compared to same figures recorded last year.

“I think we have done a lot more to reduce these fire outbreaks from 891 for the first five months of last year to 474. So doing the comparison you can see that we have done more than half of the job already. This is all due to some proactive and pragmatic measures that we were able to put in place and we will not rest on our oars but would want to continue and assure the general public that we would do our best to further reduce these outbreaks,” he stressed.

He however admitted that the fire command needed to do more in the areas of electrical installation triggered fires which saw a marginal increase from 27 to 29 cases and vehicular fires which recorded an increase from 61 to 74 cases respectively.

Meanwhile, the Ashanti Regional Fire Commander is championing a health and safety awareness walk on Saturday June 10, 2017 to do fire education and also test the endurance of his firemen in the region.

Speaking to Ultimate News, Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) Semekor Fiadzo stated that, “Normally people always think that when it is getting to the dry season before we start our safety campaigns. But we want to take it to another when people are relaxed, where we do not experience a lot of fires. That is when we want to do the vigorous safety awareness campaigns.

“When we start the education now, before we get to the dry season, they might have gotten so much of it and started the application and by so doing we will not experience the fires,” DCFO Semekor Fiadzo added.

The Ashanti regional command of the fire service at the beginning of this year set itself targets to reduce incidents of fire by as much as sixty percent (60%) in 2017.