By Kim Jae-heun
After seeing two big fires in last three months that took nearly 80 lives, the government has decided to increase the number of the country’s firefighters by 62.8 percent from last year. President Moon Jae-in’s administration will recruit around 5,260 firefighters this year alone, the largest number in the nation’s history. Specifically, the North Chungcheong provincial government will hire 349 firefighters, a 305 percent increase over last year. The province is home to Jecheon, where a blaze killed 29 people in a multi-purpose facility last December
The government of South Gyeongsang Province _ where a big fire killed 50 people in Sejong Hospital in Miryang last month _ will also recruit 431 firefighters this year, up 220 percent from 2017.
“We have been recruiting around 3,000 firemen every year but this year we plan to recruit 5,200. We will particularly mark a sharp manpower increase at fire stations in North Chungcheong, North Jeolla and South Gyeongsang provinces where few firefighters are allocated,” a Ministry of Security and Public Administration official said.
Still, experts say the new recruitment of 349 firemen in North Chungcheong Province is short of the 1,260 it needs; and the situation is similar in North Jeolla and South Gyeongsang. Beginning this year, the government will push a plan to recruit nearly 20,000 firefighters nationwide by 2022.
It will also increase its employment in other public service sectors such as welfare. The government will recruit 1,473 nurses to work in centers for patients suffering from dementia and to provide homecare services, double last year’s number. Some 2,535 people will be hired for organizations responding to environmental issues such as fine dust air pollution, a three-fold increase from last year. Around 2,750 people will be hired to work at emergency response teams, up from the 766 people recruited last year.