ICT big names pursuing PECC deal

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 06 Mar 2008

Nearly all of SA's big-name ICT and business continuity companies have requested qualification to tender for the construction and running of two Public Emergency Communications Centres (PECC), for the Department of Communications (DOC).

Among the companies biding are Saab Grintek, Satyam Computer Services and Continuity SA. Saab Grintek is keen to propose a solution based on the technology its mother company delivered to the Swedish Rescue Services Agency. The solution would include training and assistance from the Nordic agency.

Satyam Computer Services has proposed a non-profit private-public partnership model, based on the Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), in Hyderabad, in India's populous Andra Pradesh province. EMRI's single contact centre handles all emergency and police calls for a population in excess of 80 million people.

EMRI receives over 13 000 calls a day, 85% of which is answered in two rings. The average time taken from call receipt to delivering a patient to hospital is just 34 minutes.

ContinuitySA is host to Gauteng's Provincial Disaster Management Centre and the Gauteng Health Department's Emergency Medical Control Centre that dispatches and controls the region's ambulances. The two centres, opened by Premier Mbhazima Shilowa, in November, cost the province R50 million.

Apparently absent from the list is Altech, which last year built the Gauteng police a state-of-the-art R600 million contact and radio control (CRC) centre, in Midrand, fitted with the Terrestrial Trunked Radio (Tetra) system. Safety and security minister Charles Nqakula last year said every province will eventually have a Tetra-based CRC centre.