Rescue 1122 receives 1.5m prank calls in 8 months

PESHAWAR: The Rescue 1122 has received 1.55 million prank calls during the eight months of the current year, 779000 alone from the provincial capital, irking officials at the main control room who remain alert round-the-clock to rush ambulances and fire trucks in case of any emergency to avoid any loss of life.

According to the data of the Rescue 1122 headquarters in Peshawar, 1553585 calls received by the control room from January 1 till August 31, 2019 were either fake, irrelevant or dropped. Out of these calls, 779336 were from Peshawar, followed by 248949 from Dera Ismail Khan, 147989 from Nowshera and 97569 from Abbottabad districts. The lowest number of fake calls during the year was 7718 from Mardan. The authorities had recently expressed concern over the large number of prank calls, asking the relevant departments to take measures to stop it so the rescuers can concentrate on helping the general public in case of emergencies. The law provides six month jail and fine for prank calls. “The Rescue 1122 law provides six month jail and fine for these acts. We have written to service providers to tell us identity of these callers so we could register cases against them, as our system shows only number of callers and not names. They refused to provide us details and asking to approach PTA after which he have now written to it,” Abid Majeed, the secretary of the Relief, Rehabilitation and Settlement Departments, under which Rescue 1122 works, told The News.

According to the data a total of 2827070 calls were received by the Rescue 1122 during the current year. The highest number of calls for help, 1196245, was received from Peshawar. Rescue offices in Mardan received 583289 calls for help, Dera Ismail Khan 292248, Swat 70756, Abbottabad 99109, Nowshera 220329, Kohat 28143, Haripur 66201, Chitral 69038 and Charsadda received 201692 calls for help.

The data of the Rescue 1122 says the rescuers responded to 10612 road accidents, 35840 medical emergencies, 1834 fires, 764 violence and bullet injuries, 81 building collapse incidents, 244 incidents of drowning and 1506 other nature emergencies. The Rescue 1122 also provided services and rushed the victims to hospitals in 45 bomb explosions during the current year.

“As many as 50756 patients and victims were rescued in these incidents while 1247 expired. The rescuers rescued 22036 people in Peshawar, 15147 in Mardan and the rest in other districts,” an official said.

In some of the incidents, the rescuers went beyond their duty to help the victims by risking their lives. However, there were hardly few occasions that the services and sacrifices of the rescuers were acknowledged. Recently, a rescuer could not attend funeral of his sister as he remained busy in efforts to rescue three sisters who had drowned in Swabi. On many occasions, the rescuers had to rescue people while firing was still taking place or there were fears of a second explosion.

The Rescue 1122 has recently extended its services to the Khyber district by setting up the first station in the erstwhile Fata. Around 20 stations will be set up in the merged districts in coming months while the services will also be extended to other districts of the province.