1,400 new emergency staff join Rescue 1122

The service is also a model for emergency preparedness in SAARC region

LAHORE: Rescue 1122 Director General Dr Rizwan Naseer has said the emergency service, in its short history of 13 years, has rescued over 5.6 million victims of different emergencies while maintaining its average response time of seven minutes in all the districts of Punjab.

He said this while addressing a ceremony on Friday to welcome 1,400 emergency medical technicians and drivers, who have joined Emergency Management Training at the Emergency Services Academy on Friday. Dr Naseer congratulated the cadets selected for the Life Saving Service.

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He said after provision of technical assistance and free training to other provinces, now the service was operational in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.



He asserted that the main reason for success of Rescue 1122 was owing to the recruitment of right staff, establishment of emergency management system, model legislation and most importantly the training provided to the staff for the first time in Pakistan.

“Today Rescue 1122 includes emergency ambulance, rescue and fire services, thus providing a sense of safety to citizens with a timely and comprehensive emergency response to any emergency,” Dr Naseer said.



He said after witnessing the deteriorating condition of urban search and rescue in October 2005, they accepted the challenge and launched Urban Search and Rescue Team. “After witnessing the deteriorating fire service, we launched the Fire Service in 2007, through which we have responded to over 100,000 fire incidents and saved losses worth over Rs280 billion through professional firefighting on modern lines,” he remarked.

“Today the Service has become a model of emergency preparedness, response and prevention not only in Pakistan but also in the SAARC region.”

He urged the newly recruits to pay full attention and keen interest in emergency management training as on ground when everyone would be leaving a disaster site, only rescuers would be running towards that site to save lives, risking their own lives.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2017.