Amresh Parab
Panaji
The response time of Goa Police’s Police Control Room (PCR) vehicles to distress calls has improved considerably, dropping from over 18 minutes in December 2023 to 8.27 minutes in June 2026.
State police aim to reduce this response time even further to six minutes.
“Our target will be to bring the PCR vehicle response time to around six minutes. We are adding 15 more PCR vehicles,” said Director General of Police (DGP) Alok Kumar. Currently, the fleet consists of 48 PCR vehicles, which include two highway patrol vehicles, in addition to 10 Pink Force vehicles.
Kumar told ‘The Navhind Times’ that continuous efforts are under way to improve the response time so that PCR vehicles can attend to distress calls much faster.
According to the police, the state PCR received 5,798 calls in June 2026, with vehicles taking an average of 8.27 minutes to respond. This improvement is attributed to the daily monitoring of PCR vehicles and the practice of rewarding and recognising top-performing personnel attached to the units.
In comparison, the average response time for PCR vehicles under the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) was over 18 minutes in December 2023.
During the first six months of 2024, the average response time decreased slightly to 16 minutes and 40 seconds.
Kumar, who took charge as DGP of Goa on July 15, 2024, had earlier explained his strategy to ‘The Navhind Times’: “After going through details of the State Police Control Room (SPCR), I thought about how we can further improve the response time. So I decided to monitor the performance of the PCR vehicles on a daily basis.” “Secondly, we decided to recognise the best performer among urban PCR vans and rural PCR vans,” Kumar had said.
Following the implementation of these measures, the response time dropped to between nine and 12 minutes before reaching its current low.
The foundation for this system was laid in October 2019, when Chief Minister Pramod Sawant inaugurated the ERSS control room and flagged off PCR vans fitted with Mobile Data Terminals (MDT). The project was executed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a premier institution under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
A significant feature of this system is that call receivers can instantly see the caller’s details on-screen. The built-in software allows the receiver to pinpoint the caller’s exact location on a Geographical Information System (GIS) map, enabling the call to be connected immediately to the nearest emergency vehicle’s MDT without delay.
