Personal Jobs

[Easyrollin]

Hi all

My first post here, so be gentle 

Firstly, I have been an active member of the CFS for about 8 years in a very small hills brigade (which shall remain un-named for this exercise) and so I have a reasonable feel for most of the ins and outs.


One thing confuses me though, and I'm just wondering what peoples views are on brigades doing occassional personal jobs for brigade members or friends of brigade members?
Things like small jobs around a farm, say pumping some water, coverage for a small burn off, or retrieval of a trapped animal, etc etc etc.
Small things, nothing major or persistent, but not actual official jobs. You get the idea.

I fully support CFS engagement within the community and helping out where we can but am very concious of the image that CFS projects to the broader pulic.
It would seen to me that such activities (or members perks if you like), aside from the insurance/litigation aspect, could be seen by the public as a form of corruption (or at the least a misuse of goverment assets).
I guess every one of us here has benefitted to a small extent from being memebers of the CFS at some time (free entry into a country fair or a free cap or a t-shirt perhaps) but I'm just wondering how far this should really go?

Am I right about feeling uncomfortable about being associated with things like this that seem to come up from time to time, or should I just take a chill pill and go with the flow?



Discuss

[FF GAZZ]

I am totally behind you, CFS is a professional emergency service even if we are volunteers and everyone in CFS needs to remember that, ok some brigades may feel free to cover burn offs but after all we are all accountable to the chief officer and the South Australian community hence as we are volunteers of the CFS we MUST follow Chief Officers Standing Orders at ALL times.

Ok your community may accept the local CFS does favours but what about the great SA community and if someone does in an emergency and the SA community finds out oh hang on the local CFS were out looking out for themselves, we all know how bad the press can be sometimes then try and explain that to the Regional and Chief Officer.

[Pipster]

I can't see a problem with helping out your own members with things like pumping out something, rescuing animals etc.  (Although we do respond to calls from the public to rescue animals).

The question to ask is, living in a small community, if other members (non CFS) of that community asked for assistance in the tasks you talk about, would you go & help them too?  I suspect the answer would be yes.

So if you are willing to do these tasks for members of the public, why is it bad to do the same for your own members?

In my view, the tasks you have listed should be out down either as AIRS reports (such as rescuing an animal), or on the non-incident stats for other tasks - I see all those tasks as legitimate use of CFS resources

Pip