Good and well-qualified fire officers are what we need, considering the kind of fatal fire incidents these men have to fight, but it seems the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) thinks otherwise. Twenty youths who scored high marks in the entrance test for the post of sub-fire officer and also cleared the physical test, have not been hired, because the civic body thinks they are 'over-qualified'. After they filed an RTI seeking an answer from the state fire department, chief fire officer P S Rahangdale said the youths were eligible for the post that NMMC had advertised. However, even then the civic body refused to hire them.

Advanced studies

Six months back NMMC had started advertising for the post and had mentioned three requirements for it – Class X pass-out, a Marathi language course and a six-month course fire course. Accordingly the students had enrolled for the tests and all 20 of them got more than 100 marks out of the total 170. Though their names had appeared in the list of those who qualified, they never received their joining letters. On enquiring, the NMMC additional commissioner told them that they were not eligible for the post, as they had done an advanced fire course. All the students have done one-year courses at the Maharashtra fire academy and National fire institute.

One of the students, Nishant Pawar, son of Rashtrapati Award winner Vasant Pawar, who has fought several dangerous fires in the city, said, "We worked so hard to get good marks in the exam and fulfill our parents' dream but the NMMC had some different plan for the hiring process. They put up wrong advertisements in the first place. Later, when we submitted our documents mentioning that we have done advanced courses, they approved the applications. They even issued a final joining list with our names on it, but they did not give us the joining letters because we are over-qualified. They have wasted six months of our life." Vasant, a leading fire officer, wanted his son to be one, and even though he is suffering from a number of health issues, he spent a lot of his savings for Nishant's fire course.