PUTRAJAYA: A total of 140 government buildings nationwide including 39 of them located in the federal administrative capital have not obtained their Fire and Rescue Department's Fire Certificate (FC).
Fire and Rescue Department director-general Datuk Mohammad Hamdan Wahid said all of these buildings were categorised as "designated buildings" which required the FC.
As a building placed under the said category, he said, it must fulfil certain requirements including forming Building Fire Committee comprising representatives from the management and a Fire Safety Manager.
Such buildings, he added, must also install automatic fire detection monitoring system in order for them to get the FC as required under Act 341.
"We are still inspecting and identifying weaknesses, if any. Efforts are being made in stages by building owners to make improvements on fire safety aspect on top of installing equipment.
"The department does understand the big financial impact when making such improvements. What we usually do is give building owners the time needed to rectify any weaknesses," he added.
For the buildings in Putrajaya, he said, there should not be any issue to make the necessary rectifications because they were new buildings, adding that the department believed all the buildings in the administrative capital would get the FC by next year.
Earlier, Hamdan presented the department's awards to 124 recipients including to National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye and 17 media practitioners including Berita Harian reporters Tuty Haryanti Ahmad Rodzi and Suhaila Shahrul Annuar; New Straits Times reporter Nur Aqidah Azizi as well as NSTP photographer Ahmad Irham Mohd Noor.
Hamdan also said the department had received a total of 20,916 emergency calls between January and March.
"Of the total number, 10,266 were calls relating to fire and the rest on rescue and humanitarian cases. The losses recorded due to fire is RM436.3 million worth of assets, but we also managed to save RM4.63 billion worth of assets," he added.
