SINGAPORE: There's been a spike in the number of cases involving unauthorised change in the use of premises.
Latest statistics from the Singapore Civil Defence Force show that the number of notices and summons issued for such cases went up by 36 per cent in the first six months of this year, compared to the same period last year.
Unauthorised change in the use of premises is a fire safety offence.
Forty
per cent of the more than 860 notice of fire safety offences were for
changes of residential property, to workers' dormitories or backpacker's
hostels.
Assistant director of SCDF's Operations Department,
Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Daniel Seet, said: "Our primary concern is in
the area of the fire safety provisions laid out in the original plans
which may be inadequate for the new purposes or intent. So this is
something that we require the property owner to come back to the SCDF
for an approval process, so we can enforce this properly."
Overall, the number of fires the SCDF responded to in the first six months of this year registered an all-time low.
SCDF
responded to some 2,200 fires from January to June this year - the
lowest number recorded for the period, in more than 10 years.
Fires from rubbish and discarded items continue to be the leading cause of a blaze.
The number of non-emergency calls also dropped to an all-time low, by about 11 per cent.
SCDF attributed this to better public awareness on the non-emergency ambulance hotline.
- CNA/cc