MANSEHRA: Railways minister Azam Khan Swati and local MPA Babar Saleem Swati patched up their differences at the intervention of the ruling PTI’s provincial leadership.

Federal parliamentary secretary MNA Salah Mohammad Khan told reporters here on Friday that the minister and MPA hugged each other in a meeting called by provincial party chief Pervez Khattak and announced they would work together to further the party’s interests, especially for its victory in the coming local body elections in Mansehra district and other parts of Hazara division.

Mr Salah, who was made the PTI coordinator for Hazara earlier this week, said the party had begun efforts to persuade its leaders bury the hatchet in the province ahead of the second phase of the LG polls to ensure victory.

“We [PTI] suffered a setback in the recent local body elections due to internal differences, but that won’t be the case in the next phase of polls to be held in March,” he said.

The parliamentary secretary said the party would resolve internal differences in other districts as well.

He said the PTI had begun receiving applications for tehsil council chairmanship elections in seven of the eight districts in Hazara division.

The LG elections have already been held in Haripur district.

FAKE EMERGENCY CALLS: The Rescue 1122 emergency service has complained most of the calls it received last year were either unnecessary or prank ones.

According to it, only four per cent of the emergency calls were found to be genuine.

Rescue 1122 district emergency officer Hafizur Rehman told reporters on Friday that it was unfortunate that the people didn’t realise that the phone numbers were dedicated to emergencies, and wasted the precious time of his staff members for unnecessary talk or fun.

He said the Rescue 1122’s Emergency Response Unit received 265,874 calls in 2021 and found only 10,767 of them to be genuine and responded them well in time.

Mr Rehman said the Rescue 1122 personnel reached out to the victims soon after learning about traffic accidents and ensured their immediate shifting to the nearby health facilities.

“We successfully handled 923 medical emergencies and 125 incidents of fire, 22 of brawl, 50 of drowning and 87 others in the last year,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2022