Are Emergency lines accessible to citizens?

Alliance for Community Action Fact Checking Unit
The ACA fact checking unit embarked on a fact finding exercise to determine whether emergency lines were accessible to citizens in an event of an emergency incidence in their area.

Verification Process
A review of Zambia Information, Technology and Communication Authority (ZICTA) 2017 numbering report showed that the emergency numbers 991, 992 and 993 are allocated to Police, Hospital and Fire Services respectively.

Fire Service Emergency
To determine whether telephone lines to fire emergency services are accessible, the Fact Checking Unit wrote to the Ministry of Local Government to find out how accessible the emergency lines provided to the public are. The Ministry of Local Government provided a comprehensive response for 40 districts.
The Ministry indicated that during the period 2016 and 2017, in the 40 districts for which information was provided, 32% of the emergency lines were accessible (13 out of 40 lines) while 30% had no emergency lines (11 out of 40 lines). Overall about 68% of the emergency lines were either difficult to access or inaccessible. A break down is given in the figure below.

Please see full list as provided by the Ministry below.

In addition, in its response, the Ministry indicated that by standard procedure, the Control Room/Watch Room attendant dispatches the fire tender within one minute of receiving the call. However, according to the Ministry this time in currently not being adhered to due to challenges of traffic congestion and increased population.
In further verification, the ACA fact checking unit called the lines the Ministry indicated were accessible. Of these, 3 out of the 13 lines said to be accessible (Siavonga, Lusaka, and Chibombo) did not go through after several attempts. 10 out of the 13 responded on first ring. Of the emergency lines the Ministry indicated to be inaccessible, the emergency line for Mkushi was found to be accessible.
It is important to note that all the lines provided by the Ministry and called by the ACA are landlines that are not widely publicised for example Livingstone (021 3324043/4). These lines are generally not known by the public. The publicised and well-known numbers known are short codes 993 (fire) 991 (police) and 992 (hospital).
Ndola informed us that the emergency number 993 is accessible from a ZAMTEL number, while all the other districts indicated that the short codes do not work.

Health Services Emergency Lines
Ministry of Health indicated that it was in the process of revamping National, Provincial and District Emergency Communication and Dispatch Centres. The short code 992 was called and response was that the number has either being changed or does not exist.

Police Service Emergency Lines
Ministry of Home Affairs did not respond to a request by the Fact Checking Unit for information on their emergency line. The ACA fact checking unit however called 991 and found that it was not working.

Finding
Emergency lines in Zambia are not effective. The commonly known short codes 991,992 and 993 are either not working or in Ndola where 993 works, it is only accessible to those on the Zamtel network. The accessible lines are on landlines which are generally not publicised as there are not known to the public. Of these the fire services have the quickest pick up of phone calls. Health services emergency lines are at the time of this report not working. The police short code for Lusaka does not work. This was not checked in other districts.

ACA Fact Checking Unit: Building a questioning public.

The ACA Fact checking Unit is part of the EU funded ‘Speak up Zambia Project’ implemented in collaboration with the Freepress Unlimited and the House of consciousness.