Guardian

THE Emergency Communication Centres (ECC) being constructed in the 36 states of the country, including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, will reduce crime and tackle emergency situations in the country, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Communication Technology, Dr. Henry Akpan, has said.

Akpan who spoke with journalists shortly after inspecting facilities at the call centre in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State at the weekend said that when fully operational the centres would address some of the challenges being experienced in the country, especially in the area of security and emergency issues such as flooding, accidents and others.

He said that the ministry was doing its best to fast-tract the commissioning of the centres throughout the country as way of keying into the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan and for the benefits of Nigerians.

His words: “We wants to make sure that Nigerian can quickly see the benefits of these call centres that will assist us in getting across to government in emergencies cases also to have quick responses to those problems.

“What we are going to do is to increase the awareness of these call centres so that when you have any emergency situation anywhere you can reach us on this call centre and we can reach out to the police or fire service or whichever agency that would be responsible for the solution of the emergency problem.

“The centres will strengthen our democracy and take care of some of the challenges we have now on the area of security and other emergency issues like flooding, accidents and so on.”

Akpan said that the call centre had enough back up light facilities such as the UPS system which is capable of supplying light for upward of 12 hours when they are challenges of power failure in the state.

The Operational Manager of the centre, Mallam Alkassim Umar, said that the centre was one of the mandates of the National Communication Commission (NCC) through which citizens in distress could dial number 112 and get attended to immediately.

He said that it was a toll free number and customers were free to dial the centre at any given time whether they had money or not and they would be attended to by call takers who would receive the call and relate the call to the police or any agenda responsible for the problem.