JEDDAH: The Jeddah Municipality has signed three contracts to ensure people who ring the emergency number 940 receive a fast response.
Hamid Al-Silami, head of public services at the municipality, said the contracts would commence in two months.
The municipality’s emergency number receives an average of 250 calls per day, Al-Silami said, adding that the number of callers double in case of bad weather.
He noted that the most common complaints concern sewage, garbage collection, illegal stalls, potholes and road bumps. “Recently, we have been receiving large numbers of calls about merchants inflating prices of consumer goods,” he said.
One of the contracts has been signed with a company to support municipality workers who deal with problems relating to electricity, fallen trees, wrecked cars, replacing missing sewage covers and removing illegal road bumps.
The second contract has been signed with a company to deal with overflowing sewage and the third contract has been signed with a company to deal with problems such as closing unused wells, confiscating illegal motorbikes and horses from the Corniche, and removing illegal roadblocks.
Al-Silami said the emergency number is operated by 47 call operators, who work shifts around the clock seven days a week.
He added that the emergency center is connected to a special computer network, which connects all of the municipality’s branches to one system.
Each registered complaint would automatically be linked to the concerned department and the municipality branch that is near the address where the complaint is made.
Al-Silami said that the municipality has also signed two maintenance contracts for its emergency call lines and wireless networks to ensure a constant flow of communication between the public and municipality officials.
