The financing of Lapland’s rescue service will decrease by a million next year, although growing tourism was promised to take into account

Markus Aarto, Lapland’s Director of Rescue, has received prior information about next year’s funding, dismayed.

Earlier this year (74-20140198), the government proposed that tourism and airports will be taken into account in the future of rescue funding-but otherwise.

Now, preliminary information reports that in Lapland, a tourist record, the rescue financing will not increase, but is on a decline next year by well over € 500,000.

In the future, Lapland’s rescue service would perform another thousand tasks a year with less resources.

– We have long been under -resourced in relation to the number of assignments.

When it comes to reducing operational readiness, it is directly reflected in the longer standards and lower service levels.

Risk pattern favors large cities

Aarto points out that in recent years, Lapland’s rescue service has had many strict situations that have practically bound all the resources available.

He criticizes the method of calculation based on so -called risk boxes, with bigger cities winners. In the calculation method, tourist destinations take into account sites where the number of beds is high for one square kilometer.

– In the conditions of Lapland, tourism is divided into a wide area and quite small units of accommodation. They are excluded from this calculation.

According to Aarto, the change in the financing model will lead to the money being removed from a sparsely populated area and transferred to a densely populated area.

He hopes that large entities should be better taken into account when developing the risk scarf.

– That the five million overnight stays in Lapland, huge tourist flows and increased service needs would also be taken into account. Of course, I hope this still wins sense.

Still the opportunity to influence

– Yes, the atmosphere here is that you do not know if you should cry or laugh now that taking into account the impact of tourism cuts the financing of Lapland’s rescue service an annual one million euros, Jokela says.

According to him, funding is still coming to the consultation later this year.

– Of course, we will give a statement that highlights the facts that are related to the whole.

Jokela, for its part, has been discussing, for example, with the Lappish Special Adviser to the Minister of Social Affairs and Health.

– In the next few days, a joint discussion between welfare area managers and rescue leaders is coming, where financial issues are also on display.

According to Jokela, the load on tourism is visible in many ways. For example, he refers to the much -featured tourist incidents in traffic.

– There is no extra payer for the cost, but everything is paid for from the financial pot of the Lapland welfare area.