International Fire Day, Beka: We are without defined status, facing lack of staff and equipment.

Beka stressed that the situation in this service remains disorganized and with unfulfilled demands, underlining structural and institutional problems that convey the sector.

May “4, Kosovo firemen find them in such a form in an undefinated, undefinated manner, with a host of problems or in a situation like this with unconditional or unconditional demands for work and inadequate equipment, with inadequate staff and many, many other problems. The demands are past. We have no defined status. Even though the law has been passed for fireship-saving is in place, it's not in effect. We are neither a civil servant nor a public worker. We have founding acts with civil service, so we are treated, with civil service condition. Here again, there's this problem that has developed a dualism of local power and central level. Our salaries are in the municipality, we are staffed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Emergency Management Agency” respectively, he said.

He added that the number of firefighters is insufficient and does not meet the legal criteria, while working conditions are unfavourable.

The firelights are few in number, fail to meet the criteria under the fire-fire law, which is a 1500-strong fireman. Average age is delayed, near the '50s. No health insurance, no disability insurance, a lower cofficiency in relation to other emergency services, or so I say, informed. Without job risk, even though the fire service is one of the specifics of all other categories. With the new wage law, however, both the issue and the risk of work has been eliminated. So problems have accumulated, the situation is the same, and we rightly ask the question until this situation continues. It's not that we don't know the problem of fire and rescue”, he said, Online Economics reported.

According to him, despite efforts to convince the institutions, the situation remains unchanged and hinders the fulfillment of the fire mission.

We have tried to convince institutions that this situation should change anyway. The fire mission was the salvation of human life and the material goods of this country, this society, and so on in this form as we are organized, we do not serve the foundation for which we were founded”, he said.

Beka called for harmonisation of responsibilities between the local and central levels, stressing that lack of co-ordination is creating budgetary barriers as well.

“We have consistently sought to harmonise positions between the local government and the central level to make arrangements until the issue is settled. It's a very problematic issue of the fire budget, because, I said, even earlier, now for recruiting even all the rights we have articulated both the central level and the local level, each blames each other; it's municipal responsibility or vice versa is responsible for the ministry”, he said.

He criticised institutions also for failing to organise activities for marking this day, while raising concerns about the lack of budget in some municipalities for recruiting new firefighters.

The last thing we've had is that 50 new workers have been accepted. Those municipalities that have had a budget were recruited by young firefighters, those municipalities that have no budget, and which, by any means, have to increase the number, because we have municipalities out of three firefighters even less, for example, in a change, which is a very weak force for salvation, they cannot recruit new workers because they have no budget. The question is, are we municipal workers, are we ministry workers?”, he said.