Stop the lies, Anaglate!

WE have been very measured in our comments on last Saturday’s fire that swept through a section of Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra.

As a responsible entity, Groupe Nduom believes that rather than putting the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) under the sword, there was the need to look critically at how to resource the GNFS to achieve optimum results in any fire fighting situation.

Groupe Nduom is however, compelled to react to some comments made by the Deputy Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Ghana National Fire Service, Prince Billy Anaglate, blaming us for not putting in place basic fire prevention measures at the affected Groupe companies.

Billy Anaglate told Citi FM, an Accra-based radio station, that there was nothing in place to protect the place in terms of fire safety.

Groupe Nduom does not only find Mr. Anaglate’s assertion unfortunate but pedestrian and reckless. He needs not to lie to save his job. Anaglate should not test our resolve on the issue; we have lost millions of dollars through the unprofessional handling of the issue by GNFS and we silently albeit painfully are counting our losses.

That notwithstanding, we have acted very professional because of the obvious logistical problems we believe confront the Ghana National Fire Service.

This, we believe, should form the basis of a broader discourse with the view of avoiding similar fire situations in the future. In effect, we the most affected entity have tried to avoid any form of emotional and parochial discussion of the issue. So why the spins and lies Anaglate?

Indeed it’s palpably incorrect for Billy Anaglate to suggest that our offices at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel did not have fire detectors and extinguishers at the time of the incident. We emphasise that every facility at the Coconut Grove Regency compound has fire detectors and extinguishers. Ironically, we bought these equipment from the Ghana National Fire Service and have receipts to that effect.

Coconut Grove Regency Hotel has a standing relationship with the Ghana National Fire Service where they (Fire Service) take our staff through periodic fire fighting measures. We want to tell Billy Anaglate that we have GNFS certificate commending us for taking up the GNFS orientations.

Amansan Television, (ATV) one of our offices that was gutted by the fire last Saturday, has a special fire segment on its Anopa Bosuo morning show programme that he Anaglate appears on to educate people on Fire Safety measures. So what is Anaglate talking about?

We are not the least surprised at the latest spin by Anaglate. This is a man who has since day one of the incident sought alibi in many lame and ungrounded lies about the incident. First he said, the Fire Service got hint of the fire incident through a commercial taxi driver when in fact the distress call to the office of the Fire Service was made by a staff of Groupe Nduom Corporate Affairs.

After falling flat to that obvious lie, Anaglate tried albeit unsuccessful to impugn that they got to the fire sight just three minutes after a report by the so-called faceless taxi driver.

The truth however, has emerged that the Fire Service personnel got to the scene well over twenty minutes.

Listen to another of Anaglate’s lie: That the generator at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel was running and that resulted in the widespread of the blazing fire. Indeed the generator at the hotel was immediately put off when the fire started. Granted without admitting that that was even the case, as professional fire fighting entity, shouldn’t Anaglate and his people have insisted that we put off the generator?

In any case, if the fire personnel were up to the task, why didn’t they put off the fire when it had only started at one of the 12 offices that the fire finally destroyed? Unfortunately for Anaglate and his cohorts many Ghanaians watched the blazing fire live as they went round their work rather amateurishly.

We still insist that the Ghana National Fire Service needs help. Some weeks ago at Teshie-Nungua in the Greater Accra Region, some four Fire Service personnel got injured in a fire combating operation.

They were made to take a loan of GHC1000.00 to cater for their hospital expenses. Where is the motivation for anyone to offer his/her all in any fire fighting mission?

Again we want to point out to Anaglate and his cohorts that 20 officers of their National Headquarters share seven (7) fire fighting uniforms in operations similar to what was experienced at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel.

Perhaps Anaglate may not be aware; if that is the case, then we want to draw his attention to the fact that during their abortive fire combat at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel, there were only four oxygen masks which got finished within a matter of 20 minutes.

Under such harrowing experiences, did anyone, including Anaglate, expect personnel of the Service to offer their best in any fire fighting situation?

Anaglate should learn the art of Public Relations better rather than resorting to cheapish propaganda showpiece that in the end only exposes him as an artful liar with perhaps no knowledge of his work schedule.