Nigeria’s Emergency Communications Centres (ECC) now employ at least 1200 youths across the country. This is according to a statement made available to Technext by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and signed by the commission’s Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Muoka.
The commission noted that beyond providing essential emergency response services to the Nigerian public, the ECCs, an initiative of the Commission, now provide employment placements for many Nigerian youth and professionals, as well as offering informal business activities to the citizens across the Country.
“As the ECCs assume more crucial roles in providing emergency communications services to the citizenry, it is also providing additional socio-economic responsibility of providing job opportunities to the citizens as each of the centres have staffs made up of Call agents, Facility/IT Staff, and Administrators. In effect, more than 1,200 are currently offered employment at the 27 operational centres across the country.
NCC
The NCC says more youths will be employed when the additional 8 centres under different stages of completion become fully operational by 2024. It also says the basic salaries of the staff of ECCs have been carefully set by the Commission, to ensure that the jobs at the centres are attractive for the Nigerian youths, and other categories of employees.
Furthermore, the Emergency Communications Centres are also managed by indigenous Nigerian consultants who are engaged to provide total facility and operational management of the centres.
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About Nigeria’s Emergency Communications Centres
The Emergency Communications Centres (ECC’s) are emergency response centres set up by the NCC to provide Nigerians with a channel to report emergency situations in real time. This gives relevant authorities the opportunity to promptly respond to those emergencies. Nigerians can report such emergencies using a toll-free number, 112, which is similar to the 911 emergency number.
The ECCs are now fully operational in a total of 27 State Capitals across the country. Four more centres are currently undergoing test runs and are billed to commence services in September 2023. This will bring the total number of ECCs to 31, while another set of four is expected to come into operation before the end of the year.
The Commission says it has provided technology platforms such as Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems for the respective response agencies such as police, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Fire Service, Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC), Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Ambulance Service, and State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMA) to facilitate the dispatch of emergency calls through the national emergency toll-free number 112.
Agents of the ECCs, have been trained, and equipped with state-of-the-art communications equipment, including digital radio and Internet-protocol (IP) and geo-location technologies to enable responders to easily identify locations of incidents for effective and efficient delivery of rescue services to the public.
Emergency Centre services in Nigeria are available, live, 24 hours a day as the agents run in shifts to ensure that services are delivered at all times of the day.
The NCC says response agencies, such as the Police with round-the-clock duties to prevent, stop and arrest crimes, are now being provided with additional mobile communications devices, some installed in their offices, to enable them to instantly receive information from call agents at the emergency communications centres. This is to also ensure that the top echelon of the force is provided instant information for command and control over emergency situations or incidents across the country.