NEW DELHI: The citizens of Delhi can avail the three emergency services of police, fire brigade and ambulance by dialing a single number — 112, police said on Wednesday.
In a statement, the Delhi Police stated that in case of emergency, a person in distress can dial 112 from phone or pressing power button thrice on smart phone quickly to activate a panic call to Emergency Response Centre (ERC).
“This call immediately passes to the Control Room for providing immediate police assistance to the distress caller. The distress calls can also be made through Social media, e-mail, SMS,” police said.
Minister of State for Home Affairs G. Kishan Reddy inaugurated the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS-112) and launched ‘Prakhar’ (Street Crime Patrol Van) — Delhi Police inducted 15 Scorpios with modern devices for extensive patrolling in street crime prone areas of the city.
These Vans are initially deployed at 15 crime-prone locations and will be increased further as per the requirements of Delhi, police said.
“With the implementation of new ERSS-112 system, the police response time is reduced tremendously. In this new system, the call simultaneously passes to Police Control Room as well as to at-least nearby five persons through the mobile app, who are volunteers to help the people in need,” police said.
The main call centre has been setup at Shalimar Bagh. Commissioner of Police Amulaya Patnaik said that this new system would expand the grievance redressal system of police and other civic agencies.
However, the initiation of the helpline number does not appear to be successful as calls to the number were not responded to. Special Commissioner of Police, Operations and Communications, Muktesh Chandra or DCP SK Singh were unavailable for comments.