A critical look at the fire in FENZ (Fire and Emergency NZ) and who might get burnt …
Had it not been for Covid, FENZ would still have an ideological and underfunded mess, needing the attention of a competent minister, overseeing the amalgamation of the professional and volunteer services, which commenced in 2017.
Covid however, has left us a pile of ashes short of a Phoenix.
As reported in a previous post last Friday:
https://bcbnzblogcomponent.wordpress.com/2022/06/06/explosive-situation-for-fenz/
FENZ reaffirmed its position in a statement saying, that they would not be changing their current policy in respect of the Health Order.
A statement from Jan Tinetti’s office this week said that the Minster received regular updates and she was satisfied the organisation was meeting its performance expectations.
That position is vigorously contested by both the NZPFU (Professional Firefighters Union) and volunteer brigades across the country both reporting crisis situations that are not being responsibly dealt with.
In what appears to be a panicked response to the rising crisis and public awareness, FENZ has in certain cases been ignoring their vaccine mandate policy and allowing unvaccinated professional staff to work operationally in order to maintain their required back-up coverage in urban areas, but creating high-risk situations in rural areas by demanding that volunteers abide by their mandate requirements which FENZ says it is obligated to do because of the Health Order.
Another contested area is new recruits where volunteer stations say they are finding it tough to increase their numbers when they have to abide by vaccine mandates while FENZ is yet to indicate whether it is applying vaccine mandates to paid recruits, now.
However, when it has been clearly stated in a legal opinion that the Health Order is not a health issue but a human rights issue, this raises other major areas of concern.
FENZ, while saying it acts on the health information provided, won’t say if it has sought any Human Rights advice.
The Human Rights Commission has refused to acknowledge whether it is aware of the FENZ situation and whether it is or intends to take any action.
Their ‘absolute silence’ would suggest that they are all too well aware and consider it best to say nothing.
The HRC has been approached twice for comment but on both occasions has not responded.
While this is the current and ongoing situation, remember that we have both paid and volunteer staff, who because of either, their beliefs or health choices, were stood down from their roles, because they refused vaccinations when the mandates were first introduced.
It has been established through information released by FENZ that this situation affects hundreds of firefighters across the country and further that FENZ refuse to say whether or not they will proceed with any reintegration of these in-limbo cases.
The cumulative damage to careers, families, and lives, must at this stage be an unknown to anyone but the FENZ administration, and the consequences of an investigation into the treatment of FENZ staff (especially) since the court rulings around mandates, would no doubt prove extremely embarrassing, and possibly expensive, if not highly offensive in many cases.
The question as to why FENZ took such an extraordinary step in the other direction to police and defence may though be found somewhere other than in a covid explanation and in what was happening ideologically before and during the attempted and incomplete amalgamation of professional and volunteer firefighters, mentioned above.
Volunteers, said to be required to attend workshops where they were told they had white privilege, were certain to show traits of unconscious racism, sexism and microaggression, while carrying out their chosen roles.
Considering, volunteers in particular give up a lot of their time and often their sleep at night, and willingly subject themselves to danger, hard work, and risk, to protect life and property, as well as donating much of their leisure time for ongoing training, surely that shouldn’t include giving up their own personal beliefs and views and seemingly leave them in need of personality modification.
No doubt a nasty experience for those subjected to this requirement but the real casualties of this manufactured cover-up are those staff who have been stood down and who have been left unrepresented by our media.
I certainly hope we are legitimately fulfilling that role, now, in ensuring a democratic light shines on this situation.
Normally it would be inappropriate to go further because Jan Tinetti is a candidate in the Tauranga by-election but her office was asked both whether she had chosen to continue as minister during the by-election and whether she considered herself reliably informed of the situation.
Then I have questions: Would Tinetti actually want anyone else knowing about this mess and which MP in their right mind would volunteer to ride out the storm while a minister flaffed about in a by-election that their party has said they have “No expectations of winning.”?
Lastly, I don’t want the criticism drawn that this is a deliberate attempt to undermine Tinetti’s electorate campaign when answers to these questions have been sought over a number of weeks and there has been deliberate obstruction around any realistic remedy.
Tinetti doesn’t deserve to be an mp let alone a minister given what is unfolding here or the opportunity of using a by-election as an excuse to be generally absent from tough questions which are also not being answered by the Board Chair Rebecca Keoghan.
This may be a first and in that case we might also ask whether by-election candidates should be allowed to retain ministerial roles once nominated for that election.
Writer of Sorts 