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A South African firefighting agency has apologized to Canada and promised an investigation after a pay dispute led to a strike by 300 firefighters who are battling the blaze near Fort McMurray.
The firefighters received a hero’s welcome by Canadians last month but are now refusing to go out in the field in Fort McMurray to battle a wildfire due to the salary dispute.
Working on Fire CEO Johan Heine says the deployment to assist in fighting wildfires in Canada, which ended in a pay dispute, is not how the organisation does business – calling it a huge embarrassment.
“Working on Fire is a professional company. Internationally, we regularly deploy firefighters and this is the third incident that we have had.”
He says the incident is a direct contradiction of company values.
“We apologise for embarrassing the Canadian city, authorities and the country as a whole with this international incident.”
Heine says the organisation always discusses remuneration with firefighters and formal contracts are always signed before they leave.
But firefighters are angry they don’t receive hourly rates instead of daily rates like their Canadian counter parts.
Agencies/Canadajournal
