More than 15.5 million calls were made last year to the 112 single emergency number in Romania, and almost 62% of them were fake (prank calls), according to data from the Special Telecommunications Service (STS).

Most of the emergency calls were transferred to the Ambulance service – 3.74 million (or 61% of the total), the Police – 1.37 million (22.3%), the Fire Department – some 869,000 (14%), and the Gendarmerie – more than 168,000 (2.7%).

Most of the prank calls came from Covasna, Calarasi, and Mures counties.

Over 1.24 million emergency calls have been registered in January 2016, 39% of which were real and 61% were hoaxes.

According to a recent report of the European Commission, Romania is among the Member States with the best reaction time (under 10 seconds) and high accuracy in locating callers to 112.

“The 112 Center has an average response time of 3.68 seconds, which is registered in 94.63% of the calls made to the emergency number. When it comes to locating the callers, this is done at a rate of 97.20% for fixed networks and 99.27% for mobile phone networks. According to the same report of the European Commission, Romania is one of the few EU countries where 112 is the only emergency number,” according to the STS statement, reports local Agerpres.

The 112 emergency number became operational in Romania in 2005.

Romanian service gets European prize for best 112 emergency number system reform

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com