Report on 112 emergency call service comprises 14 measures to be implemented

Senior official with the Interior Ministry (MAI) Raed Arafat said on Wednesday that he presented to the Prime Minister Viorica Dancila a report on the 112 emergency call service drawn up by an inter-ministerial committee that comprises 14 short, medium and long-term measures to be implemented. "I've had the opportunity to present to Mrs Prime Minister the report and the final conclusions; the report will be made public in full. It looked into the current situation of the 112 service, the dispatching and the location problem. The implementation of the AML, the advanced mobile location system, was also analysed, and our conclusion is that after implementing this system we should not stop, because other complementary systems need to be implemented in the future. Fourteen measures were established at the end of the report, divided by terms: short term -within 12 months, medium term - between 12 months and 36 months and long term, up to 60 months. (...) Short-term measures include improving the legislative framework to speed up the location system, for which a draft emergency ordinance is already in place amending and supplementing emergency ordinance 34/2008 regarding the organisation and operation of the single national system for emergency calls and emergency ordinance 111/2011 regarding electronic communications (...). Tomorrow they will be up for public debate and may be modified," Arafat said at a news conference at the Government House. He said that the ordinance also includes aspects regarding prepaid cards. An analysis was made of the first six months of this year by the Special Telecommunications Service (STS) that shows of the 47.70pct non-emergency calls made during the six months, 52.86pct were abusive, and 81pct of the abusive ones were made using prepaid cards, which caller or card owner could not be identified. In the ordinance, the reference to prepaid cards is only in the context of calling 112, only when 112 is called would the mobile operator disclose the name and data of the prepaid card owner. Other measures proposed in Arafat's report are: the conclusion of a collaboration protocol with Google; testing and later on commissioning the final AML-type location solution (nationwide implementation deadline: 8 months); reconfiguring the infrastructure by the mobile operators in collaboration with STS; promoting the 112 call application developed by STS in February 2019, so that it may be used as a temporary measure until the implementation of the AML, a promotion that will be conducted by all the institutions to be downloaded by as many people as possible. "Among the medium-term measures we have the continuation of the implementation of the concept of integrated dispatchers and continuous training of dispatchers; the establishment of two training centres, in Bucharest and Mures, for the training of trainers and dispatchers. It is a measure already started, as the centres exist, they have trained the first trainers, and we are going to continue the preparation under a program on European funds. Moving forward, 650 dispatches are planned to be trained for emergencies; Police and 112 dispatchers will also have to take the training. (...) Our goal is to get professional dispatchers who can deal with emergency calls entirely without transferring them, without having to ask other agencies to intervene, with experts at dispatching offices who can provide support when needed. Another measure is the completion of the implementation of a 112 system upgrade project. There was talk of an auction that is in progress; it is the responsibility of STS and what we want is for the auction to be finalised as soon as possible and for the implementation, which will last up to 36 months, to start," said Arafat. AGERPRES (RO - author: Dana Piciu, editor: Karina Olteanu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Rodica State)

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