KARACHI, Oct 16: The once effective organization of Civil Defence, which had played an effective role during the 1965 war, has become totally redundant over the years and has degenerated to the level of a unit which collects monthly/ annual charges from the commercial establishments.

By definition, the Civil Defence is a public organization sponsored by the government to deal with natural disaster and war emergencies. However, in the rescue and relief operations launched after the October 8 quake in the country, every organization but the Civil Defence is taking part.

The Civil Defence is not in a position to play its role in such operations as it has neither resources nor manpower to deal with natural calamities.

It is necessary to involve community in the efforts towards emergency relief and rehabilitation for which a volunteer Warden Service had been prescribed under the title of ‘civil defence’. It is a prime duty of the provincial Civil Defence authorities to enrol 78 volunteers as warden on a population of 10,000 and impart them training of first aid, basic fire-fighting and rescue to enhance their skills to cope with the situation. It means that ideally Karachi should have more than 100,000 trained volunteers for first aid and rescue work.

However, such a warden service is regretfully non existent. The provincial department of the Civil Defence has around 36 instructors who are supposed to undertake field work to encourage volunteers in receiving the training.

Each instructor is supposed to take one training class on fire, rescue and first aid on a fortnight basis at community level. However, practically the entire job is limited to paper work and no field work is carried out, according to an official of the city government.

On the other hand, instructors are reportedly issuing fire safety certificates to the different business establishments in the city. In fact, they sell the certificates and collect monthly or annual charges.

A restaurant-owner simply termed the Civil Defence instructors ‘extortionists’.

According to the relevant rules, the Civil Defence Organization is supposed to evolve strategies and policies in situations before, during and after emergencies. The organization has five per cent paid staff while the remaining 95 per cent are volunteers.

Following the August 17, 1999 earthquake in Turkey, recommendations were made by different civic agencies calling for restructuring the fire service and merger of the Civil Defence Organization into the fire service.

Considering the performance of the Civil Defence Organization in our country, these recommendations seem quite relevant in the case of the CDO.