Daily Times

The Punjab Emergency Service has mobilized 5, 37,712 community members and established 4,048 Community Emergency Response Teams at Union Council level during 2018 across the Punjab.

These views were expressed by the Director General Punjab Emergency Service Dr. Rizwan Naseer while presiding over ‘annual performance review meeting 2018’ held at Rescue Headquarters on Tuesday. The meeting was attended by senior officers of the Rescue Headquarters and Emergency Services Academy.

DG Rescue said that purpose of detailed review is to analyse the performance of Community Safety Program, training need of community identified by District Emergency Officers (DEOs) and to finalize the strategy to raise one million volunteers for establishing healthy, safe and resilient communities in Pakistan.

Head of Community Safety and Information Deeba Shahnaz briefed that 2018 remained year of community mobilization as over 0.5 million community members were sensitized in educational institutions, government organizations and in Union Councils.

She said 4,048 Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are constituted and trained to respond with Emergency Service in case of any major disaster. She explained that each CERT established at Union Council level is consisting of at least 12 members and each member is enrolled and trained as Rescue Scout.

She also highlighted the different initiatives taken by the districts in which District Chiniot established over 65 Community Rescue Centres with community participation whereas District Layyah, Lahore and Sheikhupura showed extraordinary performance in National CERTs Rescue Challenge 2018.

Out of total 5,37,712 community members, 3,25,587 have been sensitized in 2,779 awareness activities, 1,78,928 have been trained on basic life support and fire safety in 2,006 training sessions and 33,197 Rescue Scouts have been trained at Union Council level.

The Director General Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) directed all DEOs to ensure the Community Safety activities in line with 2019 Rescue commitment to establish healthy, safe and resilient communities by mobilizing the power of humanity through a corps of 1 million Rescue Scouts in Pakistan.

Published in Daily Times, January 9^th 2019.