I recently had the opportunity to attend a fire-fighting course at the International Safety Training Centre in Hal Far.

I found the course to be exceptionally interesting and highly professional in its delivery. The tutors were very well trained and prepared and made the course, though intensive in its content, a breeze and quite enjoyable to say the least.

The centre’s training facilities, in particular the Fire Ground and Shelters, proved most suitable in our training on fire and rescue simulations, providing realistic scenarios of how awkward and dangerous these circumstances present in real life. This enabled us to appreciate the fast response required in such situations as well as the very awkward and often risky conditions accidents create to those trying to help.

The centre has immense potential to reach out to the oil industry particularly in the North African area thus establishing itself as an ideal regional training facility. In this regard, I feel that the government should also look into Malta’s potential to establish itself as a regional emergency response centre, capitalising on our strategic position as well as multilingual personnel thus creating further investment and employment opportunities apart from ensuring an adequate supply of suitably trained personnel.

On the home front meanwhile, I believe that every individual should take up such a course to equip oneself with the right skills for potential emergency eventualities. Incidentally the institute runs other courses apart from fire-fighting.

My appreciation goes in particular to the Operations Manager Gordon Bedlington as well as his team of instructors, most notably Charles Depasquale, Andre Muscat and Richard Cassar, all of whom made our course such an interesting and invaluable experience.

Bernard J. Schranz

Birkirkara