Punjab minister Brahm Mohindra on Monday issued strict guidelines to the officers and asked them to address any emergency complaint received on the department's 104 helpline within an hour.
Health and Family Welfare minister Mohindra said the 104 helpline was started with the motive to address the problems faced by the general public in various government hospitals and to seek suggestions for better implementation of the schemes.
He said the motive seemed defeated as many of the complaints have not been addressed since long.
Mohindra said that taking serious cognizance of the matter, he has ordered the concerned authorities to address these pending complaints within record time.
"The emergency complaints will now be addressed within an hour on priority basis and departmental action would be taken against the erring officers," he said.
He said the 104 helpline control centre has been asked to report to the Director, Health Services immediately in case the district administration does not co-operate in addressing any emergency complaint.
The minister said that now the non-emergency but important complaints would be addressed within two days for which one week was the deadline earlier.
He said the department has received in total 7,64,047 calls on 104 helpline out of which 4,49,263 calls were related to seeking some information of health facilities and 17,229 calls were actually made to register complaints.