Almost 5 million calls to 112 in H1 2020, non-emergency calls decrease

The Special Telecommunications Service (STS) on Wednesday reported that in the first six months of 2020 a total of 4,896,707 calls were recorded to the 112 Emergency Service line, down 14.33% from H1 2019.

"The public has called 112 more responsibly this year, with non-emergency calls down 18.31% from the same period in 2019. More than half of the emergency calls were transferred to the ambulance," STS said in a press statement on Wednesday.

Thus, according to statistics with the Special Telecommunications Service (STS), the administrator of Romania's Single National System for Emergency Calls (SNUAU), January - June 2020, out of a total of 4,896,707 calls, a number of 2,669,464 calls were emergencies (54.52%), and 2,227,243 were non-emergencies (45.48%).

STS says that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, "it is remarkable that even in this context the number of non-emergency calls decreased, which demonstrates that citizens have understood the importance of responsibly calling the emergency line."

Under recent legislation adopted at the end of March this year, abusive calls to the 112 Emergency Service line is punished with fines of between 1,000 and 2,000 lei or with 100 to 200 hours of community service, while false alerting of emergency agencies carries a fine from 2,000 to 4,000 lei or 200 to 400 hours of community service.