The benefits of urban community volunteers, an auxiliary force of fire fighters, could not be obtained properly as the government has no particular guideline and policy to recruit and lead them, experts said yesterday.

The volunteers are the first responders of urban disasters, like fire and earthquake; therefore, the concerned government bodies should institutionalise them by forming some policies and maintaining an updated database that contains their information, they said.

In addition, the volunteers should be given adequate training and incentive so that they feel more encouraged, the experts recommended at a roundtable discussion.

Bangla daily Prothom Alo in association with Save the Children and the Social and Economic Enhancement Program (SEEP) organised the roundtable on institutionalisation of urban community volunteers at the newspaper's office in the capital.

The government has set a target to train a total of 62,000 such volunteers within 2020 thinking of the country's vulnerability to earthquake, and 33,000 of them have already been trained, said Syed Matiul Ahsan, deputy director (disaster risk reduction) of Save the Children.

“But the volunteers have not been institutionalised yet, because it is not clear which government body will lead them. Besides, there is no particular policy to recruit and guide them,” he said.

Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence maintains a manual database for the volunteers, but it has not been completely digitised yet. As a result, the fire fighters experience difficulty in finding the volunteers during disaster, he added.

Brig Gen Ali Ahmed Khan, director general of the fire service, said, “We gave them [volunteers] training and provided gears. Now we have to think of institutionalising them…”

Dhirendra Debnath Shambhu, president of parliamentary standing committee on relief and disaster management, said, “The prime minister has recently directed us to bring all the voluntary platforms, including the urban community volunteers, under an umbrella.”

Reaz Ahmed, director general of the Department of Disaster Management; Reefat Bin Sattar, a director of Save the Children; Abdul Quayum, associate editor of Prothom Alo; and Prof Nazrul Islam, chairman of the Centre for Urban Studies, also spoke.