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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Firemen, cops get new vehicles

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The Bureau of Fire Protection will be distributing 135 newly procured fire trucks today (Monday) as part of its capability enhancement program, Malacañang said on Sunday.

The turnover ceremony will be spearheaded by President Benigno Aquino III at the Quezon City Memorial Circle along with representatives of recipient-cities and and municipalities all over the Philippines.

This is the fourth and last batch of the scheduled distribution of the BFP’s newly procured fire engines that will coincide with the distribution of 144  patrol cars  to the Philippine National Police.

Prowl cars. Some of the police vehicles and fire trucks go through final inspection at the Quezon City Memorial Circle before their formal turnover in rites which President Aquino will  spearhead. EY ACASIO 

The first as well as the second batch of the fire trucks were already distributed last year, while the third batch with a total of 155 units fire engines were turned over to its recipients last Feb. 19 of this year.

This is the first and the biggest fire truck procurement in the history of the BFP with a total of 469 units, 244 of which are 1,000 gallons capacity while 225 are 500 gallons capacity that amounted to P2.5 billion.

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“These new additional fire trucks will aid in the filling up of shortages on its assets and will intensify fire suppression capability of the BFP. It will not only boost the capability of our firefighters, it will also help them to be more effective and efficient in performing their mandated task, similarly these new equipment will also lift the morale of our firefighters because the dilapidated fire trucks will be replaced by the new ones,” Aquino said.

With the standard ratio of 1:28,000 or one fire truck for every 28,000 population, the BFP still needs at least 1,000 fire trucks to achieve the minimum requirement considering that at present there are 2,215 fire trucks being utilized by the BFP all over the Philippines catering to almost 100 million population.

As the Fire Prevention Month culminated this April, the BFP has recorded at least 1,909 fire incidents nationwide with  P169.3 million worth of damages for the month of March 2016.

As the summer season is experienced, the hot weather condition will   contribute to the incidents of fire as evidenced by the spontaneous grass and forest fires occurring in some parts of the country like the Mt. Apo in Davao. 

Meanwhile, the PNP has procured 186 units of Patrol Jeep 4×2 (Mahindra Enforcer) as repeat order from the savings generated from the procurement  of 1,470 patrol jeeps sourced out from the Capability Enhancement Program fund CYs 2011-2013.   

The procurement of additional mobility assets for police stations and different PNP units will improve police visibility and response  to any eventuality in crime-prone areas.

The patrol jeeps can also be used during relief and SAR operation, Internal Security Operation and other related activities, Malacañang said.

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