Imbert: Security ministry must ask for fire service funds

FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert says funding will be released to the Fire Service when a request is made by the National Security Ministry permanent secretary.

He was responding to a question on Friday in the House about the release of funding to the Fire Service following a statement by the chief fire officer on March 18, that various stations are currently without fire appliances partly due to the lag in disbursements from the Finance Ministry.

Imbert replied the Fire Service has been allocated $31 million under recurrent expenditure and $7 million under capital expenditure for fiscal 2019 for the procurement or refurbishment of fire vehicles and equipment.

He said as soon as the Finance Ministry receives a request of these funds from the national security permanent secretary "funds will be made available as a priority."

Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee asked if the chief fire officer has not asked for any funds and Imbert repeated that as soon as the permanent secretary requests the funds, it will be released.

Naparima MP Rodney Charles asked if the minister was aware that the Fire Services is so severely under resourced that an appliance in Princes Town will take two hours to reach to Marac when the benchmark is five minutes. Imbert said the $7 million allocation is for capital and $31 million for recurrent expenditure for fire vehicles "is not to pull a fire truck out of a ditch."

"It is for the acquisition of equipment. So the Ministry of Finance has allocated a total of $38 million for fire vehicles and as soon as the permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security requests the funds they will be made available as priority."