Rawalpindi-Rescue 1122 Rawalpindi received 120,040 calls during the month of March in which only 3,060 calls were emergency calls and the remaining around 90,000 calls were prank.

Expressing his concern on the matter, the District Emergency Officer, Rawalpindi Dr Abdul Rehman said that the irrelevant and fake calls caused wastage of precious time of the rescuers. The Rescue 1122 is equipped with software which helps in assessing such fake calls, he said.

He maintained that fake calls included kids call, musical calls, information-seeking calls, and some other obnoxious calls. “Sometimes, the citizens make calls 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 repeated irrelevant/obnoxious callers are blocked so that the emergency caller do not find the rescue number busy and could be provided timely help in case any emergency.

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

The Service had tried several solutions which included blocking of such unwanted callers, warnings over phone and sensitising the callers about the significance and importance of the emergency number. As a result of this sensitising campaign, several regular pranksters stopped dialling Emergency Number 1122, he said.

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

To a question, he said that Punjab Emergency Service-Rescue-1122 Rawalpindi rescued 2961 emergency victims in 3,061 operations conducted in different areas of the district during March.

He said that he had directed 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.

The operations were completed by rendering professional and skilled services to the people of Rawalpindi during emergencies including traffic accidents, Sui gas and LPG explosions, medical, fire, building collapse and others, he added.

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

He asked the public to avoid making useless calls to the rescue services because it usually caused wastage of their precious time and kept the entire communication system engaged. He said that the Rescue 1122 would try to provide its best services to the people of the district.