Personnel of Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) are appealing to the Chief Fire Officer through the Minister of Interior to provide the service with GoTa phones, to improve communication.
According to personnel, lots of Ghanaians complain of finding it difficult to reach the service during emergencies and fire outbreaks situations because of busy lines so the gota will aid easy and fast communication.
The GoTa device, personnel say will help in internal communications among service personnel and also strengthen the external communications with the general public.
“Sometimes we arrive late at fire scene not because we got the call and we decided to sit aloof but rather the calls come in late and so we get to the scene and the harm is already caused or the fire has already spread,” they stated.
They stated that some district fire stations across the country have issues with their telephone lines to the extent that calls to report incidents of fire outbreaks do not get to the immediate stations but rather travel to regional head office before personnel personal telephone lines are called to attend to fire incidents.
“The GoTa device will help us monitor fire outbreaks, help attend to fire scenes promptly because if you get the call early, personnel to will get there early to control the spread and again help reduce pressure on the line lines.” They added
Some personnel say some fire stations in Ghana do not even have smart phones to take pictures of fire incidents and send to the station for immediate strategic move because they are using yam phones.
Again, some personnel also called on the management of the GNFS through the Interior Minister to approach management of Ghana Post Service- Nkrumah Circle branch to use their facility as an administration or operation office to ease the tension at the Nkrumah Circle, Fire Station.
GoTa Device
The trunking communication system is an important branch of mobile communication systems. ZTE Corporation has launched CDMA-based GoTa (Global Open Trunking Architecture) digital trunking system with its proprietary intellectual property rights. Compared with TDMA-based trunking systems. GoTa system has a higher frequency efficiency and greater capacity due to advanced CDMA technologies.
Besides basic trunking dispatch services, a GoTa system can offer mature and perfect services of traditional mobile networks, including basic telecom services, complementary services, short message service and high-speed (153.6 kb/s) data services.
