A SURGE in fires in Harare has seen 780 calls received by the city fire brigade this year, Mayor Jacob Mafume, has said.

In most cases, these fires were attributed to gas explosions and electrical short circuits, as well as careless practices such as neglecting to properly extinguish cigarettes, unattended candles or cooking equipment.

While giving the state of the city address recently, Cllr Mafume revealed that the city had only six functional fire engines.

"To date, we have received 787 fire calls, which were attended to in and around Harare.

"Our city emergency services is one of the most critical areas which need recapitalisation as there are only six functional fire engines against an ideal number of 25," he said.

These shortfalls, Cllr Mafume said, had resulted in council sometimes taking time to respond to emergency calls.

"The four fire stations we have are not adequate, and the city has plans to build more fire stations with ground breaking already done at Marlborough, where we want to construct a fire station and a maternity clinic."

The city's emergency services were only able to attend to 14 000 of the more than 16 000 ambulance calls received so far this year leaving 2 180 calls, where the patient could not be moved by city ambulance.

The city had only four operational ambulances against 32 needed.

However, he said the city was expecting to receive three more ambulances to make them just seven for a population of more than two million people.

"We have procured three ambulances which we expected to be delivered during this quarter."

The city operates 42 health facilities at various levels, comprising 12 polyclinics, 5 primary care clinics, 17 satellite clinics, six family health clinics, two infectious diseases hospitals, and four dental clinics.