New Delhi: State-owned NHAI has set a 10-minute deadline for ambulances deployed on national highways to reach any accident site within a 10-km vicinity, to cut delays in emergency response. It said failure to meet the timeline could attract a penalty of Rs 10,000 per incident. NHAI, in its policy guidelines, further said that ambulances should bring accident victims to the nearest hospital within one hour from the time of ticket acceptance.
Failure to meet the timeline will attract a penalty of Rs 10,000. With an aim to strengthen the Incident Management System through the use of the NHAI Care System, the state-owned agency on Wednesday came out with new norms to effectively manage the dispatch of on-road units, including ambulances, cranes and patrolling vehicles. Under the new norms, NHAI said, “Based on location of incident, the ambulance should not take more than 10 minutes (from the time of ticket acceptance) to cover any accident within a 10-km vicinity.” “For incident locations beyond 10 km, allowed time shall be proportionally increased. The same shall be verified through GPS data/ IMS Care Dashboard,” it added. There are around 3,000 ambulances and 1,000 patrolling vehicles and cranes, covering around 50,000 km of highways under the NHAI.
Under the new service-level benchmarks, any emergency ticket rejection by ambulance will attract a penalty of Rs 10,000. All equipment, medicines and staff should be provided as per the respective contract agreements, failing which a penalty of Rs 10,000 will be imposed, the state-owned agency said. The state-owned agency said in order to ensure effective implementation of NHAI Care System, AIS-140-compliant GPS devices have been installed on all on-road units, including ambulances, Cranes, and patrolling vehicles, deployed on NHAI projects.
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