KARACHI: The provincial authorities have expedited their efforts to replicate the Punjab crisis management systems in Karachi following the death of hundreds of people in the recent heatwave, it emerged on Monday.

The Sindh government had introduced the project, which is aimed at carrying out rapid rescue and relief work both in the times of crisis and normal days, in its current annual development plan.

Based on the model of the Crisis Control Management System, Rawalpindi and Lahore’s Rescue-1122, the system will be imported into Karachi before being expanded to other parts of Sindh, officials said.

An official in the provincial government said the director-general of the provincial disaster management authority (PDMA) and the additional inspector-general (security) of the Sindh police recently visited the crisis control management system office in Rawalpindi and the Rescue-1122 headquarters in Lahore.

“The two top officials witnessed the operations of the two facilities in Rawalpindi and Lahore where they were briefed about their functioning and benefits of the efficient systems to the local authorities and the area people,” said a senior government official while speaking to Dawn.

The PDMA had been asked by the Sindh chief minister to review and replicate the two systems in Karachi and later other districts of Sindh. But the senior authorities took some two years to make serious efforts in the right direction and that too, as many believed, after the deaths of around 1,300 people in the provincial capital in the recent heatwave.

The officials said the PDMA was preparing contingency plans for the province, as the Rescue 1122 service that was effectively working in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was still unavailable in Sindh.

The previous efforts of the Sindh government to launch a service named Rescue-1122 in Karachi on the model of Punjab’s rescue service remained unable to benefit the people of Sindh. The Sindh government had made 24 ambulances, worth Rs20 million, available under the Rescue-1122 project. But they were handed over to 13 Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) hospitals including the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases, Karachi Medical and Dental College, Sobhraj Maternity Home Hospital, Leprosy Hospital Manghopir, cardiac emergency centres of Landhi and Shah Faisal Colony, Sarfaraz Rafiqui Shaheed Hospital, Pak Colony Maternity Home and Gizri Maternity Home. Besides, it was decided that one ambulance each would be stationed at the dispensary of CM House and Governor House, the officials said.

That scheme failed to improve the city’s miserable ambulatory system, for most of the ambulances were never taken out of garages.

“The new project is one serious effort,” insisted a senior official in the provincial government.

“We are reviewing schemes which are already a success in other parts of the country and will replicate them in full first in Karachi and then in other cities of Sindh,” he added.

This is the second time that the PDMA and officials from Sindh police have visited Punjab in two years. In December 2013, they had visited the emergency service academy and reviewed the functions and role of the Punjab Emergency Service. They had been briefed then on the emergency services reforms carried out in the province resulting in establishment of the first professionally trained emergency service in Punjab.

Rescue 1122 started as a pilot project from Lahore in October 2004 and had been expanded to all districts and 15 tehsils of Punjab.

“We’ll do the same. It will arrive in Karachi first and then will benefit Hyderabad and other cities and towns of Sindh,” said an official while referring to the new project.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2015

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