you said you were going to increase the number of civil servants specializing in disaster response.did you forget the disaster?

[Anchor]
At the time of the Itaewon disaster, it was controversial that there was only one public official in charge of disaster safety management in Yongsan-gu.

The government plans to increase the number of disaster prevention and safety jobs, but it has not reached its goal.

It is pointed out that efforts are needed to reduce their burden of work and improve their treatment.

Reporter Lee Hyun-jung's report.

[Reporter]
At the time of the Itaewon disaster in 2022, where 159 people were killed, there was only one public official in the Yongsan-gu Office who specialized in disaster management.

It has been pointed out that the lack of professional manpower has affected poor responses such as the belated composition of the disaster safety situation room.

However, the government had already planned to increase the number of local government disaster prevention and safety officials by 200 every year in 2020 and by 800 to 1,640 by this year.

However, as of August this year, the number of local government disaster and safety officials increased by only 200 to 871.

It's only 25% of the target.

[Yum Gun-woong/Professor of the Department of Police Fire and Public Administration at Yuwon University: (Response to disaster) We hired a public official in the disaster prevention and safety position to make the cogs work properly. Planning and disseminating to each function, managing and preventing accidents....]

[Reporter]
Another problem is that disaster prevention and safety jobs are avoided.

This is because the burden of work is heavy and if an accident occurs, it is also subject to great responsibility.

As of 2017, the early retirement rate was 11%, which is 14 times the total retirement rate for local officials of 0.8%.

In addition, 87% were found to have low or moderate job satisfaction.

[Disaster and safety official: I think the biggest challenge is to work on emergency duty regardless of weekends or holidays. I think he'd be a little reluctant about that..]

As a result, it is pointed out that efforts to reduce the burden of work on disaster prevention and safety workers and improve treatment are urgently needed.

[Lee Young-joo / Professor of Fire and Disaster Prevention Department at Kyungil University: The parts that make work more efficient so that there is no burden, the support and cooperation of other ministries....]

The Ministry of Public Administration and Security said that each local government is responsible for hiring disaster prevention safety workers,

We will make efforts to improve treatment based on retraining and payment of allowances.

It's been two years since the disaster happened here because the crowd was not properly managed.

As disasters become more diverse, there are voices calling for effective measures to maintain sufficient professional manpower.

I'm Lee Hyunjung of YTN.