Families and friends of NZPFU members, volunteer fire brigades, other unionised workers and members of the public who are not linked at all to FENZ have been showing their support in many ways in recent weeks. Daily the NZPFU receives calls and emails of support including offers to help and wanting to publicly participate in the fight to fix the FIRECRISIS.
Today we launched a new section to the FIRECRISIS website which enables friends and families of NZPFU members to record their stories and support. Just direct your friends and family to the NZPFU Friends and Families page so that their experiences can be shared. With their permission we will also share some of those experiences and views on the NZPFU social media pages as well.
Some family members of career firefighters have generously and fearlessly shared their stories through mainstream media. Those stories can also be read our NZPFU in the News page.
We have also had requests for NZPFU and FIRECRISIS merchandise. NZPFU merchandise can be purchased here and we will soon be releasing a supporter t-shirt for sale.
The public concern for the state of the fire trucks, equipment and lack of career staff has hit home prompting some offering donations and others offering to set up a crowd-funding page. While we appreciate the offer, the NZPFU does not accept donations and there should be no need for crowd-funding a fire service capable of protecting the public. The public is already funding FENZ through the fire service levy. The issue is what has the funding been spent on – where is the accountability and transparency?
FENZ’s annual reports show its revenue for the 2021 financial year had increased to $630 million. FENZ received an injection of $300 million to establish the organisation and create “a single, unified organisation” with $191 million of that tagged to provide support for volunteers and “address the gaps in investment between urban and rural fire sectors”. That funding injection was in addition to the annual funding of approximately $400 million at the time which has increased to $630 million in 2021. In addition, FENZ received approximately $50 million for “shovel-ready” station builds under the Government’s Covid scheme while saving millions in the lockdowns with travel, training and overtime impacted.
FENZ must be held accountable for the FIRECRISIS of a failing fire appliance fleet, equipment and staffing, the fragile state of its low-paid employees who are exhausted and suffering from workplace stress including many experiencing physical and mental effects from exposures to trauma with little relief or support in sight.
In unity,
Wattie Watson
National Secretary
