More than SR 300 m allocated to improve Civil Defense service

Civil Defense has spent more than SR 300 million to improve the quality of its work force and modernize its infrastructure.
“Civil Defense’s quality of service and manpower potential have improved considerably with 215 of its officers taking post-graduate and doctoral degrees,” Director General of Civil Defense Gen. Lt. Gen. Saad Al-Tuwaijeri said in a statement yesterday. 
He made the statement on the eve of the upcoming graduation ceremony of a number of technical trainees of the Civil Defense to be held in Makkah on Monday.
  Al-Tuwaijeri also thanked the Interior Ministry for its encouragement of Civil Defense officers to make maximum use of the King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship program to improve their educational qualification and skills in technical, administrative and other aspects of rescue operations.  
Al-Tuwaijeri said 23 officers are studying for their doctoral degrees in leading universities in the Kingdom and abroad while 62 officers are doing their master degrees. 
He added that 64 officers are studying for their bachelor degrees or diplomas and English language programs. 
He said 118 officers have been sent to Australia and the United States for training in airborne rescue operations, helicopter engineering and maintenance and aviation sciences. 
“The scholarship program for the Civil Defense is linked to the real needs of the field work apart from developmental and modernization plans in areas such as civil safety, environment management, fire fighting engineering, disaster management, information systems, and firefighting sciences, besides geographical information systems and operation research,” he said.
The director general added that 31 officers got their diplomas in preventive and safety sciences from the Firefighting Services Academy in Canada, 45 attended training programs at the College of Fire Fighting Services in the United Kingdom and 21 attended English language courses abroad. Another 100 officers who are already holding degrees in some technical aspects of civil defense, have been sent for advanced training in Britain, he said.