The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has come under criticism from the public for failing to respond quickly to the fire that gutted a 7-storey building owned by former Ghanaian footballer Samuel Osei Kuffour on Tuesday.

Eyewitnesses say if the fire service officials had arrived at the scene on time, several properties would have been salvaged.

“We placed several calls to the fire service offices but they failed to answer on time. And despite their late arrival they told us their water hoses were not long enough to get to the third floor so they had to place a call for additional water hoses,” an eyewitness who pleaded for anonymity disclosed.

In a swift rebuttal, the Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, Billy Anaglatey, said his outfit got to the scene on time but faced difficulties in getting access to the third floor, because the main door to the floor had been locked.

“In situations like these, people usually call our old 999 emergency number, which is not active at the moment. So we plead to the public to rather call 192 for prompt response,” he said.

He revealed that his team got to the scene within five minutes upon receiving the distress call.

He disclosed that the cause of the fire outbreak was readily not known but suspected an electrical fault.

“If there were adequate measures in terms of early detection and warning systems in the facility they would have detected the fire earlier than they did,” he added.

Mr Anaglatey therefore assured of prompt investigations to ascertain the actual cause of the inferno.

The third floor of the building, according to report, is occupied by NIIT and Sikkim Manipal University.

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