Four months have passed since the termination of the transfer agreement between the Mayor’s Office and the Fire Department, an entity that is being financed with savings.
The Fire Department had been requesting an audience with the mayor of Popayán, Juan Carlos Muñoz Bravo, to explain the need to prepare the new resource transfer agreement, however, just today, April 16, the commander of that institution, second lieutenant Francisco Arboleda Hartmann, was received by the local president.
At the meeting, Muñoz Bravo promised that, no later than April 30, this service institution will begin to receive transfers of resources derived from the fire service surcharge, which all taxpayers pay for the work carried out by El Corps. of Firefighters in the municipality of Popayán.
The resources are due to Agreement 039 of 2011 that introduced the fire service surcharge, a contribution that citizens make to support the work of this institution, whose actions are for the benefit of the same community and the municipality.
With the money contributed by the citizen, firefighting activity is financed, in order to respond, as it does, to the comprehensive attention to the risk caused by fires, rescues, accidents of all kinds. The Fire Department has more than 170 volunteers.
The delay in the preparation of the new agreement is due to the fact that the head of the Legal Advisory Office of the Mayor, Ana Patricia Prado, presented a draft Agreement to the Council for that corporation to authorize raising the amount, up to a certain amount, so that the mayor can contract with public and private entities without having to request authorization from the Council.
The municipality’s lawyer, according to her interpretation, assimilated the agreement with the Fire Department to the other contracts signed by the mayor.
For four months the fire department has been financed with savings and its own resources that it had earmarked for investment projects, but money began to run short and the situation is urgent.
Consequently, the commander, Second Lieutenant Arboleda Hartman, hopes that the mayor will speed up the contractual process and begin transferring the resources contributed by taxpayers.
Referring to the mayor’s commitment, Arboleda Hartman said after the meeting: “This is very good news for the functioning of the CBVP and for the attention of the cases that Law 1575 brings with it, such as comprehensive fire risk management. , rescues in all its modalities and attention to incidents with dangerous materials.”