Single emergency service coming, says Abrahams

By next year, Barbados will have a single emergency service linking the ambulance, police and fire service, says Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams.

And the construction of the new headquarters of the Barbados Fire Service and the Emergency Ambulance Service under one roof at the Pine, St Michael, marks the beginning of this process.

Speaking ahead of a tour of the construction site, Abrahams said the days of multiple emergency numbers were coming to an end.

“Right now if you have to call the Fire Service you have to call the Fire Service’s number, the same goes for the Ambulance Service and the Police Service. Half of the time people can’t distinguish between the numbers and start to call them at random.

“We have to get to a point where we have one emergency number where persons can call and a trained dispatcher can place the call where it is supposed to go. This would prevent a lot of confusion and prevent people from making multiple calls within the context of an emergency. The calls would be logged one time and dealt with in a systematic way,” Abrahams said. (Nation News)

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