Baronda pushes 3-digit emergency hotline for Iloilo City

By Rjay Zuriaga Castor

Iloilo City Vice Mayor Love-Love Baronda is proposing the establishment of a three-digit emergency hotline for the city to improve response and accessibility to emergency services.

Baronda noted that during emergencies and disasters, residents often struggle to remember the contact numbers of different agencies or offices.

The proposed hotline, she said, would serve as a simple, quick, and easy-to-remember number that the public can call during emergencies to get timely assistance.

“We hope that different offices in the city can be integrated so that we have one hotline number that people can easily recall, and offices can immediately respond,” she said in an interview on Aug. 20.

“We hope that our system will be unified and, at the same time, we can better meet the needs of our people in Iloilo City,” she added.

Her proposal is now being discussed at the committee level.

Baronda said discussions on which number to designate are ongoing, as it will depend on the number to be assigned by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

She added that they are still studying whether the system should be managed by the National Telecommunications Commission, DICT, or the city’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, among other agencies.

Currently, the Philippine National Police’s 911 emergency response system works by routing calls for police assistance to a central command center staffed by trained personnel.

They quickly gather vital details such as location and incident type, then verify the information.

The closest police units are dispatched immediately, aiming for a 3- to 5-minute response time.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government also recently announced that all 911 hotlines in 34 cities nationwide will be integrated into a unified Emergency 911 system by August.