The NIK carried out an audit on the activities of the Ministry of Interior and Administration (MSWiA) in the years 2007-2009 with regard to the implementation of the 112 emergency telephone service. It should be the principal emergency phone number to be dialled free of charge from any telephone or mobile phone in order to reach emergency services, namely ambulances, firefighters and the police. Poland, as a member state of the European Union, is obliged to introduce this service, yet it has not managed to do it for six years already, despite substantial amounts of funds allocated for this purpose, and still lags behind other European countries.
The NIK’s opinion on the activities of the Ministry of Interior and Administration in this field is negative, with regard to legal, organisational and technical solutions applied alike. Even after the European Commission threatened to impose sanctions on Poland, the final conception of the 112 emergency telephone system has not been developed. It seems that within the Ministry there is no coherent plan how to do it, ideas change quite frequently and, as a result, only provisional solutions have been applied so far.
The NIK’s audit reveals that the system for locating persons calling for help, the works on which started in August 2007, was not ready for the next twelve months. What is more, it did not cover landline operators other than TP SA, therefore 26.7 percent of those who use landline phones were excluded from the system. The audit conducted in seven administrative regions of Poland showed that the provisional locating system is not effective enough. It does not provide the police and firefighters with reliable access to telephone operators and, consequently, they are unable to obtain detailed information. Phone operators either gave inaccurate information on the location of persons dialling 112 (within an accuracy of 100 metres to even 100 kilometres), or transmitted information after quite lengthy time (on average after 2-6 minutes, but in extreme cases even after 2 hours and 40 minutes). Quite frequently, there were problems with connecting to the 112 emergency number. Almost every tenth attempt to do so in the TP SA network, was unsuccessful.
The audit was also concluded with positive opinions on to the activities of the heads of the State Fire Service, the Police and regional governors (voivodes). They provided continuity of emergency calls despite the lack of system solutions and well-developed technical infrastructure, and several organisational shortcomings. The NIK’s opinion on the activities of the head of the Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) was also positive. The UKE President in an appropriate manner supervised telephone operators obliged to provide access to 112 free of charge.
