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Sindh govt to launch its own emergency ambulance service

By Our Correspondent
September 21, 2018

The Sindh government would soon start its own rescue ambulance service to provide emergency help to citizens in distress, Adviser to the CM on Information and Law Barrister Murtaza Wahab has said.

Wahab said this on Thursday while talking to journalists as he visited the Rescue 1299 Emergency Response Centre and Command & Control Room at the office of the Karachi commissioner.

He said the Sindh government had made foolproof security arrangements for all the processions taken out in the province on the occasion of Muharram. He said he had himself reviewed the special arrangements being taken by the relevant authorities for Muharram to secure the lives of mourners and to facilitate them.

Wahab said he had witnessed very commendable coordination among different agencies as the problems of people were getting resolved instantly. He added that aside from him, the Sindh local government minister was also visiting the routes and places of processions as well as congregations of Muharram in the city, while other members of the Sindh cabinet were also discharging their responsibilities in this regard.

The CM’s adviser said he would later visit the command and control centre of the Sindh Police to review security arrangements for Muharram processions. Responding to a question, Wahab said any shortcoming or drawback earlier observed in arrangements and security of the processions of Muharram had now been resolved by the government.

He added he had come to visit the command and control room at the office of the Karachi commissioner with the viewpoint that people should get to know that a emergency response centre and control room was fully functional there, which was being used to convey complaints and distress calls of people of varying emergency nature to the relevant civic and rescue agencies present in the city.

He reiterated that the Sindh government had been providing fool-proof security to all processions of Muharram and people should extend cooperation to the administration wherever they had to face hardships owing to the closure of routes on the occasion of Ashura.

He said different routes in the city had been closed to provide security to mourners participating in the processions. No complaint so far has been received by the government regarding any lapse in security.

He also appreciated the efforts and sacrifices by personnel of law-enforcement agencies in maintaining law and order in the province. Answering a question, Wahab said work on Diamer-Bhasha Dam had commenced after all the concerned stakeholders had developed consensus on the issue.

He said the people in Sindh in its areas of downstream Kotri didn’t get river water due to acute water shortage in the country. “Water is a nation-wide issue in Pakistan. We stand with the federation to resolve this complex problem but for this cause all the valid reservations of Sindh should also be duly removed,” he said.

Earlier, briefing the information adviser, Commissioner Sualeh Ahmed Faruqui said that the Rescue 1299 service and control room had been started at the commissioner’s office to combine under one roof the services of different emergency, relief, civic, and municipal organisations in the city.

He said prompt emergency support was given through the 1299 service whenever a call of a distress situation was received at its control room so to save lives of people in distress and also to secure their properties and belongings.