592 qualify as rescuers from Emergency Services Academy

The 18th passing out ceremony of 592 rescuers, including those from tehsils and districts of the Punjab, was held at the Emergency Services Academy on Saturday. The ceremony also drew in Founder of Rescue 1122 and Secretary General, Pakistan Red Crescent Society Doctor Rizwan Naseer, UN-OCHA International Mentor of International Search and Rescue Advisory Group Edward G Pearns, Director, Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) Dr Arshad Zia, Registrar Emergency Services Academy and Dr Farhan Khalid.
In his speech, Dr Khalid congratulated the rescuers on completion of their training and thanked Dr Naseer for extending his efforts for expansion of the service to all the tehsils and districts and urged newly trained rescuers to maintain standards of the service. He said the quality training of such numerous rescuers with limited resources was a gigantic task but has been achieved through proper monitoring and weekly tests and that the emergency staff would be deputed in hospitals for hands on training of emergency management in teaching hospitals before final posting.
Dr Naseer said the service was successful only because of its training on modern lines and that Rescuers were "the brave sons of soil" by putting their lives at risk to save those of others. He said the Emergency Services Academy had trained over 10000 rescuers including 844 of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; 52 of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 204 of Gilgit Baltistan, 429 of Aman Foundation, Karachi, 330 of Punjab Police, 149 of Mayo Hospital, 22 from Social Security Hospital and 12 from LUMS in past.
He also said the way the rescuers performed during the recent floods in Pakistan during 2010; 2014 and during ongoing floods shows professionalism and training of the rescuers. "Rescue 1122 has rescued over 3.5 million emergency victims since its inception and saved losses wroth over Rs 185 billion through professional fire fighting in all districts of the Punjab, which shows level of commitment and sincerity with jobs of the rescuers," he added. He also congratulated the rescuers hoping that they would maintain the same standards of the emergency services in the Punjab."
Edward G Pearns, UN-OCHA International Mentor for International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, said this Emergency Services Academy, Pakistan was the second largest professional training institute of the world. "Pakistan has made a significant improvement in the emergency sector by launching Rescue 1122 in the Punjab and now in other provinces of Pakistan. I have witnessed a great level of satisfaction among rescuers of Rescue 1122, which are enthusiastic and hard working," he added. The passing out cadets also demonstrated their professional skills of emergency management of victims in a mock exercise of mass casualties after explosion and fire. They also demonstrated skills of fire fighting and rescuing.