Employees of the Uttarakhand forest department sustained severe burns in the line of duty as they did not have basic protection such as fire fighting uniforms and extinguishers<\/p>\n
Thirty-five-year-old Subhash, a daily wage employee at the Utttarakhand forest department, reported 45% burns while handling the fire. His face and legs were severely injured. Another guard reported 20% burns.<\/p>\n
There are over 6,000 personnel deployed to control forest fires across the 13 districts of the state. But they do not have anything to protect them: No fire fighting uniforms or medicines, not even fire extinguishers.<\/p>\n
According to department statistics, three persons have been killed in ravaging fire while 13 have been injured. However, field workers believe that the number of injured persons is more than reported as officials aren\u2019t keen in reporting fire accidents of staff members.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day, at least one of our staff or a daily wager is getting injured in forest fire. But, officers aren\u2019t reporting it. They have to show only fewer details before centre government takes cognizance of their negligence. I feel Human Rights Commission shall rope in the officials for their carless attitude towards the personnel,\u201d RR Painuly, general secretary forest guards association told Hindustan Times.<\/p>\n
Ramesh Kothiyal, forester Gohri range told Hindustan Times, \u201cThe department is giving us away as fire offerings. We don\u2019t have fire fighting uniforms that could save us from blaze.\u201d<\/p>\n
With only fire beaters and green bushes to cut fire lines in burning hills, the guards feel vulnerable. \u201cThe department is so aggressive to save green cover, that they have made no emergency preparations for us. We move around forest without medicines and even drinking water,\u201d MS Negi from Chamoli said.<\/p>\n
Over 2,550 hectare has been gutted down in forest fire posing revenue loss of \u20182.5 lakh reporting 1218 incidents until filing of the report. Garhwal is worst hit where 1200 hectare has been damaged followed by 800 hectare in Kumaon and 560 hectare in wildlife areas.<\/p>\n
The department has corpus of Rs 8 lakh from Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) CAMPA and state government and have sent a proposal to centre government demanding \u201927 crore for buying water tankers, equipments and fire fighting equipments besides two choppers for aerial monitoring. But, no steps have been taken to provide fire fighting uniform and other insurance aspects to deployed personnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t provided fire fighting uniform to the personnel. However, we are seeking funds to provide them salaries and other infrastructure,\u201d Jai Raj, principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) planning and finance said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Employees of the Uttarakhand forest department sustained severe burns in the line of duty as they did not have basic protection such as fire fighting uniforms and extinguishers Thirty-five-year-old Subhash, a daily wage employee at the Utttarakhand forest department, reported…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15500,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15499\/revisions\/15500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15499"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianewsnet.com\/marathi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=15499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}