Wahab tells Rescue 1299 service to employ women

The Rescue 1299 helpline has been asked to employ women staffers in its monitoring cell to dispel the impression of gender-based discrimination in its employment practices.

Adviser to the Chief Minister on Information and Law Barrister Murtaza Wahab issued these directives on Tuesday while visiting the monitoring cell of Rescue 1299, which is based in the Karachi commissioner’s office, to review its performance during the Chehlum of Hazrat Imam Hussain (RA).

Commissioner Iftikhar Ali Shalwani briefed the provincial adviser about the working of the helpline. He said the call centre receives complaints from citizens daily pertaining to various civic and utility services, including water, electricity, sanitation, sewerage and garbage disposal.

He added that complaints are readily dispatched to the relevant civic agency to ensure their early resolution. Besides tackling these complaints, the Rescue 1299 service also attends to distress calls related to any emergency situation, including fire incidents, and coordinates with the relevant agencies to immediately dispatch emergency service providers to the site of the incident, said Shalwani.

“Although I’m satisfied with the service of Rescue of 1299, but I haven’t seen any women working here in its office as to me it seems a case of gender discrimination,” Wahab said. “The commissioner has assured me that women will be given opportunity to work for the 1299 service.”

Talking to reporters, Wahab said the accountability process should take place in the country but it had to be conducted in an impartial manner. He added that recent statements of federal ministers had given the clear impression that the accountability agencies in the country had not been taking actions independently. “How it is possible that [federal] ministers have come to know about [accountability] cases several weeks in advance,” he questioned.

Wahab further said that verbal orders, which were being given to run affairs of the federal government (like in the recent instance of transfer of inspector general of Islamabad police) carried no legal or constitutional value.

He lamented that in the regime of the present federal government, which is the torchbearer of change in the country, senior police officers were penalised and removed from their positions merely on the charge of not attending telephone calls of influential people.

Child helpline

Meanwhile, the child helpline service 1121 working in the province will be upgraded by the end of this year to improve it along modern lines.

The decision to this effect was reached at a meeting held on Tuesday with Social Welfare Minister Hari Ram Kishori Lal in chair to improve the working of the Sindh Child Protection Authority.

It was decided that the authority would be reconstituted to improve its functioning and the notification to this effect would be shortly issued. Adviser Murtaza Wahab, who also attended the meeting, informed its participants that work was underway to include material in school curricula on the subject of child protection. Lal, the social welfare minister, informed that up to 90 per cent work had been completed to construct a project in Korangi for the welfare of street children in the city.