Emergency Response Rescue 1122, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will launch a weeklong awareness campaign from Monday (tomorrow). Briefing the newsmen regarding the activities of the awareness week, Director General (DG), Rescue 1122, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dr Shams-ul-Haq said that the organisation is providing services and facilities to the people of Peshawar for last two years and had provided services on thousands of phone calls on average time of 5 minutes.
The organisation has provided service in both big tragedies and daily routine emergencies like heart attacks, electrocutions, accidents and delivery cases of mothers, which are helped in speedy shifting to hospitals. However, he said that despite these activities, a large number of people are still unaware about the Rescue 1122 service and its utilisation.
He said that the unawareness was evident from the arrival of unnecessary and obnoxious telephone calls, which create hurdles in the way of the people facing emergency situation. The purpose of the celebration of awareness week is to deal with this bad practice.
The awareness week will begin with the holding of the road show of the Rescue vehicles and staff on Monday. The road show beginning from Civil Defence, G.T. Road and will culminate at Rehman Baba Square. The road show will be followed by media seminar for about 200 participants from print and electronic media, business community and members of parliament in the local hotel. Senior Minister, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Bashir Ahmad Bilour will be the chief guest on the occasion.
The services of the Rescue 1122 will be displayed on bill boards, banners and streamers at different places of the city while pamphlets and brochures will also be distributed in the respective areas of the service. PTV Home on the first day of the awareness week will broadcast a 20-minute documentary on Rescue 1122 while the local cable system, F.M Radio etc will broadcast documentary, rescue songs, video sports, scroll and display of rescue logo. The newspapers will publish special supplements on different messages and rescue 1122 services etc.
On the second day of the week, a certificate distribution ceremony will be held for the trainees of Government Girls' Degree College, Kohat Road, Peshawar in Rescue Headquarters while awareness campaign will also carried out in the universities, colleges and schools. The weeklong awareness campaign will culminate with a closing ceremony in the Provincial Assembly Secretariat with Speaker, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Kiramatullah Khan in the chair. The closing ceremony will be attended by all eleven members of provincial assembly from district Peshawar.
Dr Shams-ul-Haq said that all formalities will be completed for giving legal cover to the services, saying a draft bill has prepared by the department of law, which would be presented in the provincial assembly soon. He called for the completion of the legal formalities to prevent the service from lapse.
He said that efforts are being made for the extension of the services of Rescue 1122 to all divisional headquarters of the province. He said that by the end of the current month the service will be made fully operationalize in Mardan and will be extended to other five divisional headquarters by the end of the current calendar year.
Talking about the performance of the service, he said that they respond to 96 percent minor emergency incidents within a short response period of five minutes. He said that since August 21, 2010 the Rescue 1122 had received 517506 telephone calls and they responded to 507,506.