Well check this out courtesy of the UFU website
SAMFS At Breaking Point
As reported in the latest Wordback, budgetary adjustments continue to cut into our ability to deliver services to the public of South Australia.
The sorry saga of the Operational Training Relief (OTR) shift is well documented in the wordback mentioned above. As well as the eight OTR positions disappearing, we have also lost one or more officers from USAR and CBR. All of these positions were deemed absolutely essential to the efficient running of this fire service only two or three years ago.
In fact, as recently as August 07, the commitment to "recall if necessary to maintain OTR numbers" was given. Sounds very similar to the commitment, "Mr ....... has our full backing", just before a political party dumps it's leader!!
As well as these staff cutbacks, various departments have had to make cuts to their previously approved funding - just speak to anyone in the Training Dept.
One ridiculous example of this is the recent email request for Departments to come up with a "Budget Efficiency Dividend" (corporate-speak for your funding has been cut by $50 or $100 thousand dollars!!!!!) If it wasn't so serious you would laugh your guts out at this inability to just face up to your employees and say 'Are you able to trim your budget?'
The only Budget Efficiency Dividend we can see is the possibility in the future of some bureaucrat or executive staff-member getting a performance bonus for reducing the budget of SAMFS??
The next episode in this tragic dismantling of one of the oldest and proudest fire services in Australia is to use an appliance from Adelaide (202) to staff the new Beulah Park station - due to open early in 2008! We are not so sure that the people who live or work in city buildings would accept this as an improvement.
In what way are the people of South Australia advantaged by opening a brand new station and using an existing appliance to staff it? Refusing to increase the Global Manning by four to enable the station to be properly staffed reduces even further the ability for firefighters to receive scheduled training.
Another station is due to open at Seaford in approx 2009. Are we to assume that it will be staffed by sending a Christies or St Marys appliance there? It wouldn't be surprising given the logic of the last couple of decades.
Currently we have approx 20 'pods' carrying essential equipment (portable hospital, CBR, etc) which need to be transported to incidents via the 'pod truck'. Will this be the next target for Budget Efficiency Dividends?
Bear in mind that all this comes after serious cuts to staffing ten or so years ago. At that time SAMFS lost a couple of front-line pumpers from the system as well as quite a few officer positions - mainly from the DO rank.
Also, the fireboat had it's crew reduced and this has had a detrimental effect on the ability to keep a pumper available for the protection of the residents of Lefevre peninsula (as well as the huge commercial development that is taking place there).
The ironic part of the last couple of decades is that the area and population covered by SAMFS has increased by around 10%. Is this all we can offer our community??
I think it is time that the SAMFS management and, more importantly, the SAFECOM board were called to account over these large deficiencies that have been allowed to build up over the last ten or fifteen years. The people of South Australia want and deserve much better allocation of SAFECOM funds to SAMFS thereby ensuring that they are properly protected from fire and other emergencies.
If SAFECOM & SAMFS are unable to improve the level of protection given by firefighters to the residents of SA, we believe some of these residents will start to apply pressure to instigate the required improvements.
