The only emergency number is 112. Our task is to speed up the work of emergency services, - Leonid Tymchenko
A single emergency number 112 will be introduced on the territory of Ukraine by the end of December 2024. This was announced by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Leonid Tymchenko on the air of the National Telemarathon “United News”, opening the 112 Service Center in Lviv, whose work will cover the city of Lviv and Lviv region.
Leonid Tymchenko recalled that on July 4 of this year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine started the work of such a center in the city of Kiev.
“And as of today, this center covers the entire central macroregion, which in addition to Kyiv and Kyiv region also includes Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions,” he noted, adding that Lviv and Lviv region join the central macroregion from now on.
The Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs said that according to the schedule by May 1, 2024, the work of Service 112 will be introduced throughout the Western Macroregion of Ukraine. And by the end of December 2024, it is planned to extend the work of the Service throughout Ukraine.
At the same time, he noted that the numbers of specialized emergency services 101, 102, 103 and 104 will continue to work after 2024.
Instead, a single emergency number is needed in order to make complex calls. In addition, the introduction of 112 Service is an obligation of Ukraine to join the European Union.
Also, Leonid Tymchenko reported that in two days 1600 calls were received to Lviv Center of Service 112 and only 15% of them were redirected to specialized emergency services. Most of them to the National Police and to emergency medical care. The rest of the calls did not require emergency services to respond.
In addition, the official noted that 15% of operators in Lviv center speak English, 20% - Polish.
“Since we plan to expand the functionality to the territory of all western regions of Ukraine by May 1 next year, we will also invite operators who speak Hungarian and Romanian to work. In order for it to be convenient for our partners for our tourists who come to the territory of Ukraine from these countries,” said Leonid Tymchenko.
According to him, the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducts training of operators with the support of our international partners. And the operators already working in Kiev and the central regions underwent internships in the relevant emergency services of the Ministry of Health, the National Police, the State Emergency Service, in order to thus make the operators of Service 112 multifunctional.
Operators do not provide answers regarding a person's diagnosis or qualifications in accordance with the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Their task is to determine which profile service they should forward a person's call to or, and there are cases where it is necessary to involve several services at once.
“For example, when there may be an accident, and there is a car fire, there are injured, in this case there is a need to involve three services at once - 101, 102, 103,” Leonid Tymchenko explained. - The task is to quickly forward a call to one or another emergency service for the fastest response, in order not to complicate the work of emergency services, but on the contrary to speed it up.”
Department of Communications of Ukraine
