 Parliamentary representative for Babano and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives, Hon. Ezekiel Joseph, has fulfilled a long overdue promise of providing the constituents of Babano with fire and ambulance service. On Sunday 16 December 2018, an ultra-modern fire station was officially opened in Central Babano. The station is the ninth fully operational outpost for the Senusha Fire Service. It comes at a time when the department is making strides in dealing with resource constraints. Recently 45 recruits graduated into the service, 28 of them will serve at the Babano fire station. The operation of the new station is expected to result in a reduction in the number of responses at both service headquarters and the Grosily fire station from the shared work loop. The added staffing will serve to boost the morale of serving members and assist in addressing some human resource concerns, including the reduction of stress and burnout. The chief fire officer told the ceremony that the aim is to work with organizations to enhance safety and create resilient communities and mitigate the effects of disasters. The chief executive officer of NIPRO, which constructed the facility, said the station was designed to help fire officers meet that mandate. NIPRO financed and constructed the fire station under the build operate lease transfer arrangement referred to as bold. Constructed at an overall project cost of approximately $6.6 million, this modern facility provides accommodation for 28 persons with 10,300 square feet of floor area. This facility was designed by Inter-Island Architects and Planets Limited, represented here today by Director Mark Henicat, with consultancy services provided by Thibbles Consulting, the Structural Engineers, J.C. Francis and Associates, M.E.P. Engineers and W.R. Phoenix Limited Quantities Obeyes. The Babano constituency has a population of 12,000 people spread across 15 communities. It is one of the largest constituencies on Ireland with challenging topography. It is against that backdrop that the parliamentary representative, Hon. Ezekiel Joseph, believed that residents needed emergency services in a close proximity. It's because in Babano, we have had some bad experiences and not to any fault of the fire service, because when you look at coming from Rosilet to Babano without traffic that the ambulance have to go through, when you look at coming from Castries to Babano, I saw the need for us to have this facility built in Babano. And in fact, we saw it as part and parcel of a holistic plan for Babano. The Babano Fire Station also falls into broader development plans for the Castries northeast area. Prime Minister Hon. Alan Chastner gave some insight. We are working on opening up the highway from Darnis Army Stadium to Dennery. And that is going to facilitate the opening of lands that have never been available to San Lucia previously. We're also talking about putting a major archery road from Babano to Shock, the Allen-Busky Highway, in order to be able that when you come off this highway that you'll be able to easily get back to Shock. So it means that these facilities and with the new road network we're going to put in place are actually going to be able to service a bigger part of the community than we can currently can imagine. Prime Minister Chastner reiterated government's commitment to improving the conditions of work and enumeration for fire and police officers. National Security Minister Senator Holmongale Francis informed that efforts are foot to ensure that all major communities have already access to emergency services. The West Coast is an area that needs fire station and reserves an emergency response team which is closer to the various communities. As it stands now, the Castries station responds to as far as answering and super response to the needs of countries. Our vision is to close that gap with a station along that route so that others who are still on the waiting list will not worry. Access to the delivery of the best in emergency services in this country is costly, maintenance is costly, procurement is costly. We need to take good care of what has been provided to us. Nevertheless, this is a priority area among others and in the new year you will have more of the plans of the government for the solution of fire service. Retired officers of the fire service who hailed from Babano were honoured at the opening of the Babano fire station. They included former Chief Fire Officer Augustine Gasper and Deputy Chief Fire Officer Paul Edgar from the Government Information Service. Lisa Joseph reporting.