MANILA, Philippines – Aminado ang isang opisyal mula sa Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) na malayo pa sa 911 ng Estados unidos ang 911 emergency hotline ng Pilipinas.
Ang pahayag na ito ni DILG Undersecretary Lord Villanueva ay kasabay ng pagdinig ng Senate finance committee sa proposed P262 bilyong budget ng kagawaran at attached agencies nito para sa fiscal year 2024 nitong Miyerkules, Oktubre 4.
“The ultimate dream is the US style set up where we have LGUs each with their own local 911 center…Considering po that there are so far 22 local call centers set up, we are still quite far away [from US’ style],” pahayag ni Villanueva.
“I think our initial estimate is that to start gaining some real headway maybe around 30% of LGUs would have to establish their own local call center for it to really sink into the public’s consciousness as a viable emergency system,” dagdag niya.
Aniya, nasa 22 local call centers lamang ang nailagay at pinopondohan ng ilang local government units, at kung walang local setup, ang tawag ay pupunta pa sa national headquarters ng 911 service.
Dahil sa kakulangan ng local call centers, sinabi ni Villanueva na ang national headquarters ay nakakatanggap ng nasa 60,000 tawag, na “simply too great for the existing manpower of the central headquarters.”
“Currently, the 911 services receive 60,000 calls per day from which we have 60 personnel per shift but right now we only have a budget of 11 personnel per shift,” ani Villanueva.
“Basically, we need a six-fold increase in our manpower to properly address the volume of calls that we are receiving,” dagdag ng senador.
“The decentralized setup similar to what happening now in the US would be the only practical way to address this in a national scale and the role of the national 911 as it is in the US would be to impose standards and training and ensure that each local center complies with the standards and in fact, that is what we have been doing with respect to the roughly 22 911 local centers that have already been set up,” ani Villanueva.
Kung mabibigyan ng sapat na badyet, umaasa umano ang ahensya na mkakapagtayo ng “complete national network of 911 services under a common standard and under a common training.”
Noong 2018, naglabas ng Executive Order si dating Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte na nagtatalaga sa “911” bilang bagong emergency hotline sa crime prevention at public safety. RNT/JGC
