Fire forum: Deputy Director of Fire Services Chan Hor-kam, Director Lo Chun-hung and Chief Ambulance Officer Mak Kwai-pui brief the media at the Fire Services year-end review.

The Fire Services Department will recruit at least 300 people in 2008-09 to fill vacancies arising from natural wastage. An incident command training centre will also be built.

In his year-end review today Director of Fire Services Lo Chun-hung said the uptake will include 167 fire and 104 ambulance officers, while the new training centre will feature an advanced computer system simulating fire and disaster scenes.

Reviewing 2007, Mr Lo said there were 31,638 fire calls last year, down 4.9% on 2006, with the number of No.3-alarm fires or above down by six cases to eight. The total number of special service calls was 22,083, up 3.27%.

He said there were 611,707 ambulance calls with emergency calls up 6.25% to 573,657 and urgent calls up 6.17% to 36,916. The department achieved its performance pledge with 92.78% of emergency ambulance calls handled within the 12-minute target response time.

The department conducted 172,492 fire-safety inspections last year.

Future plans

Mr Lo said a registered fire-engineering scheme is being studied to offer prompt certification services by the market in a more flexible manner. This will boost business-friendliness, expedite the licensing process and provide more jobs.

He said rapid-response vehicles will be deployed to more areas with limited resources while the Heart Saver Scheme will be extended to elderly homes and the hotel industry. Thirty-five ageing ambulances will also be replaced.

The qualifications framework for staff in fire, ambulance and control streams is being formed while the development of a new fire services training school is being planned. To enhance services a customer satisfaction survey on fire-fighting and rescue services will be conducted this year.