In an attempt to help efforts to increase fire safety in the nation, the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has requested that the public refrain from making prank calls to its emergency lines.
The Service said that the practise was a waste of its little resources since it required them to react quickly to fictitious situations, depriving actual fire victims of the assistance they required.
Division Officer (DOIII) Paul Tawiah, the Assin-Fosu Municipal Fire Officer, lamented the situation and told the Ghana News Agency it was "growing and disturbing."
"It is quite terrible that after arriving to a certain reported site, workers move a fire tender with the siren screaming only to discover there is no fire breakout," he added. He stated that the Service had received four calls from the Assin-Fosu Municipality. He named the top prank call communities as Assin-Dompim, Andoe, Akomfode-Camp, and Darmang.
"We hurried to the community after receiving a distress call from Assin-Darmang reporting a fire outbreak only to learn it was a hoax. This is quite depressing."
After making the call, he said the offenders turned off their phones, making it harder to identify them.
He did, however, imply that the Service was working with other security organisations to apprehend the offenders and subject them to the full force of the law.
In order to stop the escalating number of cave-ins in the region, DOIII Tawiah warned the locals to routinely rebuild all hand-dug wells, especially before the rainy season.
He said that the Service was dedicated to increasing public awareness of fire safety as part of efforts to prevent fire tragedies, particularly in neighbourhoods and commercial areas.
Since everyone has a part to play in preventing fires, the Region is fervently urging everyone to take fire safety seriously and abide by the dos and don'ts of fire.
Everyone should strive to buy a basic fire extinguisher that they can use to put out a fire before calling the fire department, the man added.
The Commander observed that the majority of fires occurred as a result of people failing to follow basic fire safety precautions like using fire only when absolutely necessary, using professional electricians to install electrical systems, and routinely conducting electrical audits of public places like markets. He made an appeal to kindhearted people and organisations to provide the Service in the region with logistics support so they could properly perform their services.