In a step towards citizen-centric governance, the Odisha Govt has fully operationalised the unified call number (112) for emergency response support system (ERSS) in the State & set a target to integrate emergency services of different departments by end of August.
Reviewing the functioning of the system, Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra directed to make ERSS more responsive & prompt & to reduce the response time between the receipt of a call & reaching of the vehicle at the service delivery point.
In the first stage, the emergency call numbers 100 & 101 of the police & fire service have been integrated with the unified number 112.
Further, Mahapatra gave directions 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 & 101, there are other numbers like 102 (Janani Express), 104 (health help desk for covid), 108 (emergency ambulance), 181 (women helpline), and, 1098 (child helpline). Besides this, helpline service is also available for senior citizens & differently-abled persons.
The Chief Secretary has asked to integrate all these services with unified ERRS in phases for making it easy & convenient for the citizens.
A target was set to integrate a maximum number of services with the new system by end of Aug.
Mahapatra also directed to engage more manpower & vehicles for immediate response. The parallel helplines would gradually be closed with full functioning & stabilisation of the new ERRS.
Additional Chief Secretary Home, Sanjeev Chopra informed, "The State emergency response center (SERC) is now functioning round the clock with 60 call takers, 12 computers aided digitised systems, 151 vehicles & 400 fire service vehicles. During the period from 19 March 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 & 27 percent were fire events."
He added that "Apart from that, around 5415 actionable calls regarding ambulance service were also received & acted upon during the period. In the month of June 8807 cases were registered out of which around 93 percent related to police & 7 percent related to fire services. During the month, 1821 calls for emergency ambulance service were received & attended".
CM Naveen Patnaik had launched the Dial-112 emergency response support system on March 19, 2021.
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