Citizens urged to give up prank calls to Rescue 1122

RAWALPINDI: Rescue 1122 Rawalpindi have received 120,040 calls during the month of March in which only 3060 calls were emergency while remaining  90000 calls were prank calls.

Expressing his displeasure on the matter the District Emergency Officer, Rawalpindi Dr Abdul Rehman said that irrelevant and fake calls caused wastage of precious time of the rescuers.

While the Rescue 1122 was equipped with software which help in assessing fake calls, he maintained that the fake calls included calls from kids, musical calls, information seeking calls, and some other obnoxious calls.

“Sometimes, citizens call and start seeking information about railways or other departments,” he added.

As a result of the effective monitoring and call recording software developed by the service, the number of fake emergency responses has been restricted and the repeated irrelevant/obnoxious callers are blocked so that the emergency caller do not find the rescue number busy and can be provided timely help in case any emergency.

However, sudden increase in the number sometimes results in failure of the availability of emergency number which is very unfortunate.

The service had tried several solutions which included blocking of such unwanted callers, warnings over phone and sensitizing the caller about the significance & importance of emergency number.

As a result of this sensitizing campaign, several regular pranksters had stopped dialing the emergency number 1122, he said.

He further added that it was the duty and moral responsibility of every citizen to respect the emergency number 1122 and citizens should understand the significance and importance of emergency numbers and not try to deprive actual victims of their right to be provided timely rescue and emergency medical treatment.

To a question he said, Punjab Emergency Service (PES), Rescue-1122 Rawalpindi rescued 2961 emergency victims in 3061 operations conducted in different areas of the district during March.

He informed that he had directed the rescue officers to ensure quality emergency care to the residents without any discrimination within shortest possible time.

The emergency calls responded by Rescue 1122 included 914 road traffic accidents, 1670 medical emergencies, 64 fire incidents, 96 crimes, one building collapses, one explosion and 312 other miscellaneous operations.

Furthermore, out of 2961 rescued victims 754 were provided first aid at the site while 2063 victims were shifted to the hospital after provision of emergency medical treatment by the trained paramedics of Rescue 1122. 

He said the rescue staff despite heavy traffic had managed to maintain their standard average response time of seven minutes to emergency.

He said the ‘Rescue 1122’ would try to provide its best services to the people of the district.