By Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter 
Audrey Lewis, one of more than 132 women who now work in the Jamaica Fire Brigade. – File.
DESPITE A lowering of the passing grade on its entrance test to accommodate more male applicants, the Jamaica Fire Brigade (JFB) is still barely able to recruit sufficiently qualified male candidates to fill vacant firefighter posts.
The JFB's plan has backfired, argues Valbert Lawrence, senior superintendent in charge of training. Rather than helping the men to make the grade, he says, they are now getting four times as many women than men passing the qualifying exam.
"We were actually trying to stop a leak but we have opened up a can of worms," he lamented. "There used to be a time when the pass mark (for entrance test) was 60 per cent but now we have had to go down to 50 to facilitate the men."
The controversial entrance test, said superintendent Lawrence, is a combination of simple but necessary mathematics, verbal and other necessary general literacy skills which should not have been too difficult for the applicants.
Andrea Blake, one of the women who was successful in last year's exam and is now a firefighter at the York Park Fire Station in Kingston explained, however, that while she found the test last year to be manageable, things took a sharp twist in the last sitting of the entrance exam in April.
"Last year was basically at a Grade 9 level. I was told that this year the paper was at the CXC level, which would make it more difficult," she said. "Most of them (applicants) who went up to do the test this year found it difficult, some of them even walked out."
While admitting that the test this year was changed somewhat, Superintendent Lawrence maintained that the test was still planned at the same level. All that was done was a reworking of the questions because the test had been "compromised" over the years.
"You had persons (who had seen the test before from other sittings) who could just come and literally do the exam with their eyes closed," he said.
LIMITED NUMBER
Despite the success of the women, however, the JFB can only accommodate a limited number because of inadequate facilities. A report from the JFB in April pointed out that there were some 132 women in the JFB.
Assistant Superintendent in charge of records registry and women's affairs in the JFB, Devalie Charlton, said that over the years they have petitioned Government to make the facilities in the fire service more "female-friendly" but they are always told "that Government has no money, so we try to fit in as best as possible".
The performance of firefighting applicants became a subject of debate in early April when The Sunday Gleaner first reported that thousands of CXC/ GCE O'Level qualified young men seeking to become firefighters were being rejected each year because of "woefully inadequate" literacy skills.
