*********************************************************
Regarding Kwai Tsing District Council members' concerns over the reallocation of ambulance resources in Tsing Yi at the District Council meeting today (September 10), a spokesman for the Fire Services Department (FSD) said that the Department has from time to time reviewed the response time performance for emergency ambulance calls in each district throughout the territory and flexibly re-deployed ambulance resources to meet service demand of each district according to its development and population.
The spokesman said, "FSD is committed to providing quality ambulance service and has pledged to achieve the target response time of 12 minutes in 92.5% of emergency ambulance calls."
"The recent review on the performance of ambulance service in each district found that the ambulance service demand for New Territories North area had dramatically increased whereas the target response time for Tsing Yi was higher than the performance pledge target all the time. The Department therefore considered flexibly re-deploying part of resources of Tsing Yi Ambulance Depot to meet the increasing demand in New Territories North area," he said.
The spokesman said that FSD has been monitoring closely the demand for emergency ambulance service and the deployment of ambulance resources. From 2007 to 2009, a total of 197 new posts for the ambulance stream were created.
Ends/Thursday, September 10, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:36
NNNN
