Partnership with MoHA: A Facility to Enhance Capacity
Participants of Education and Capacity building Training for Firefighting Personnel in Balikpapan.
MID 2017, UCLG ASPAC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) Indonesia, host country of the Secretariat. The MoU, ever since, has generated various capacity building activities for local governments of the country. The most recent one took form in the Education and Capacity building Training for Firefighting Personnel in six cities in Indonesia arranged within April-October 2018, in close collaboration with Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG). It is a joint training program with MoHA and will be summed up with overseas training activity in Seoul, planned to be held from October 28 to November 4, 2018. City of Balikpapan and Probolinggo were two initial cities where the capacity building were held, consecutively on 23-25 April 2018 and 7-8 May 2018. The trainings were arranged based on the curriculum developed and used by SMG. The training introduced fire behaviour and Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) applied by SMG, tactics and also command system, in addition to fire handling and techniques in compartment. Discussion in respective cities further stimulated knowledge sharing on minor fire events that may change the applied SOP. During the discussion, participants also found out differences and similarities of basic fire
handling in Indonesia (applied by local governments in the country) with the one developed by SMG; thus the training enriched participants’ knowledge (both for instructors and firefighters). Besides, field visits were also arranged to discuss problems such as fire handling through call centre and evacuation path in internal firefighting post. Throughout the in-class and field discussion, UCLG ASPAC, SMG, and host cities altogether acknowledged the benefits of this training and were very much welcome the plan to have regular yearly training program. Besides, the training also identified that budget remains challenge faced by local government particularly Probolinggo, due to low level of firefighting in organisation structure. The SMG was represented by Youm Mooyoul (Technical Expert), a seconded official at UCLG ASPAC Secretariat. Training in Balikpapan was attended by 50 personnel and 30 personnel in Probolinggo. Each of the training also saw the hand-over of SOP book to each city in order to further develop their skill and capacity in firefighting. Also joining the training were experienced trainers from Indonesia big cities fire departments (Ciracas Training Centre owned by City of Jakarta and Bandung). The conducted training is part of six cities training program which is also planned to be conducted in Pangkalpinang, Batam, DKI Jakarta, and Bengkulu within this year.