BHUBANESWAR: The State government has decided to hire more vehicles for providing immediate emergency services to people in distress. With 551 vehicles pressed into service for the emergency response support system (ERSS) proving inadequate, a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary SC Mahapatra has decided to hire more vehicles for the purpose.
Additional Chief Secretary of Home department Sanjeev Chopra said the State emergency response centre is now fully functional with 124 call-takers and 551 vehicles to provide the services. The government had set a target to integrate emergency services of different departments to the unified call number 112 by August-end.
In August, a total of 8,708 calls were registered in the centre out of which 7,957 were related to police and 585 for fire services. As many as 166 calls were provided services through the centre while 1,915 calls were forwarded to ambulance services.
In the first stage, the emergency call numbers 100 (police) and 101 (fire service) have been integrated with the unified number 112. Issues relating to the integration of 108 ambulance services with the new number were also discussed.
Director of National Health Mission (NHM) Shalini Pandit told the meeting that around 30,000 calls per day are being received through 108 out of which more than 20,000 calls are related to ambulance service.
Considering the importance of the ambulance service, the Chief Secretary directed to make the new system fully equipped both in terms of technology, manpower and real-time location monitoring of the vehicles.