Fire Services director Lam Chun-man yesterday said the need to cut 2.5 per cent or $80 million in 2004-05 meant the 378 new posts would have to be scrapped and the jobs done by existing staff through redeployment.

About two-thirds of the 329 disciplinary posts are firefighting jobs and the rest are ambulance staff.

Mr Lam said the cuts would save $73 million, and the remaining $7 million would have to be slashed through other measures.

'The cut in manpower would inevitably have an impact on our services to some extent. But with the implementation of some administrative measures, we could minimise such an impact.'

Mr Lam said the department, with the government's Efficiency Unit, had this month started to explore the possibility of contracting out some of the non-disciplinary works, like maintenance of firefighting equipment.

He said they would also consider establishing different response times for ambulances, depending on the seriousness of casualties, to allow a more flexible deployment of resources.

Deputy Director of Fire Services Kwok Jing-keung said a review of procedures for granting fire safety licences and certificates was under way to see if the work could be farmed out to accredited institutions.

'It's our long-term goal to focus the department's work in law enforcement,' Mr Kwok said.

Mr Lam added that the launch of a more advanced system to mobilise ambulances and fire resources by the end of April would help improve efficiency. The Third Generation Mobilisation System, employing satellite positioning, would provide 'real time' locations of fires and the whereabouts of the nearest fire engines.

Mr Lam said the new system was expected to help avoid delays caused by traffic.

According to the department, last year there were 1,833 cases in which the rescue vehicles could not reach the scene of emergencies within the designated response time.

It said that 73 per cent of the delays were blamed on traffic congestion.

Other reasons for the delay included travel distances and rugged roads.

Fire engines are expected to respond to building fire calls within 6 minutes in built-up areas and within 9 to 23 minutes in more isolated areas.

Of the building fire calls last year, 94 per cent were answered within the guidelines.

The department received 37,774 fire calls last year, a drop of 8.3 per cent over 2002.

Mr Lam believed the decline was due to fewer false alarms last year as a result of improved design of alarm systems, although nearly 25,000 of the calls turned out to be unnecessary.