FENZ leaders unsure whether beasting has stopped
Fire and Emergency New Zealand's top leaders have told staff they are not sure whether bullying known as "beasting" has been stopped, according to RNZ. The leaders made the comments in an internal online meeting last week. That was days after the agency, known as FENZ, publicly said beasting had been addressed and was in the past.
In its public statements, FENZ described the beasting cases as isolated cases from the past and said behaviour was now carefully monitored. It said beasting was "not part of our training" and that it had addressed the "issues of the past".
The allegation concerned old-school, military-style bullying used to belittle underperforming recruits at the national training centre in Rotorua. It arose from an 18-month-old training report. A separate Fire and Emergency training report, reported by RNZ on 30 October, found training was often outdated and disjointed, and did not meet the needs of new recruits or firefighters getting a refresh. That report included a disputed claim of beasting recruits.
In an online town hall with personnel, the chair and the acting chief executive were asked whether beasting was newly identified or whether FENZ had known about it before, and what it had done.
Acting chief executive Darryl Purdy said he would seek assurances through the training function that beasting activity or behaviour was no longer occurring in the training area. He said he was reviewing two 18-month-old reports about career and volunteer training.
Chair Raveen Jaduram said he was not sure whether beasting issues had been raised with the board previously, and definitely not in the period he had been with the board. He took over as chair in June. Chief executive Kerry Gregory resigned soon after Jaduram became chair.
FENZ told RNZ there was no contradiction. Its training team was confident that changes to training programmes had made the difference, and the new leadership was properly testing that.
