Bhubaneswar:In another step towards citizen centric Governance, the unified call number (112) for emergency response support system (ERSS) has been operationalized in the State.
This was known from a high level review meeting held on digital mode under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra from Lokseba Bhawan conference hall today wherein Additional Chief Secretary Home Sanjeev Chopra outlined the administrative and financial issues for discussion.
Reviewing functioning of the system, Chief Secretary Mr.Mahapatra directed to make ERSS more responsive and prompt. He emphasized upon reducing the response time between the receipt of a call and reaching of the vehicle at service delivery point. In the first stage the emergency call number 100 and 101 of police and fire service have been integrated with the unified number 112. Chief Secretary directed the home department to take up extensive awareness activities about functioning of the unified number so that people could make use of the system.
Mr.Mahapata directed to fully integrate various emergency services being provided by different departments for which varied help desk numbers were rolled out at different points of time. Discussions in the meeting show that apart from 100 and 101; there are different other numbers like 102 ( Janani Express), 104 (health help desk for covid), 108 (emergency ambulance), 181 ( women help line), and, 1098 ( child help line). Besides, help line service is also available for senior citizens and differently able persons.
Chief Secretary Mr.Mahapatra directed to integrate all these services with unified ERRS in phases for making it easy and convenient for the citizens. Target was set to integrate maximum number of services with the new system by end of August. Sri Mahapata also directed to engage more manpower and vehicles for immediate response. The parallel help lines would gradually be closed with full functioning and stabilization of the new ERRS.
Additional Chief Secretary Home Mr.Chpora appraised, “The State emergency response center (SERC) is now functioning round the clock with 60 call takers, 12 computer aided digitized systems, 151 vehicles and 400 fire service vehicles. During the period from 19 March to 2021 to May 2021 a total number of 20,811 cases were registered in the SERC through calls out of which around 73 percent related to police and 27 percent were fire events. Apart from that around 5415 actionable calls regarding ambulance service were also received and acted upon during the period. In the month of June 8807 cases were registered out of which around 93 percent related to police and 7 percent related to fire services. During the month 1821 calls for emergency ambulance service were received and attended to.
Director General of Police Abhaya, Development Commissioner Pradeep Kumar Jena, Additional Chief Secretary Health and Family Welfare Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra Director NHM Shalini Pandit, Director ICDS and Social Welfare Sri Aravind Agrawalla along with Principal Secretaries and Secretaries of concerned departments participated in the discussions.