Government fines external company managing 112 emergency hotline

The Catalan government has issued fines for 14 consecutive months to Serveo, an external company in charge of operating the 112 emergency hotline, due to mismanagement, as first reported by Catalan radio station RAC1 and later confirmed by the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

Between February 2022 and March 2023, the executive fined the company €68,000 because of inadequate translation services offered to non-Catalan or Spanish speakers, a lack of quality, very severe mistakes made, and breaches of procedures.

When speakers in languages other than Catalan or Spanish called the 112 hotline, there were no translators available that could take note of the emergency, despite that service being part of the management contract, which was won by Serveo after a public tender.

The government told ACN that sanctions of this kind are foreseen "in any contract of this type," as they are already approved between both parties when signing the contractual agreement.

Ferrovial's official contract to run the 112 emergency number started on April 1, 2022, but the Spanish multinational was already managing the service on a provisional basis after the previous operator went bankrupt. 

The contract was awarded for two years, with the possibility of a two-year extension. 

Note to the reader: While this article first stated that Ferrovial was the company that had been sanctioned, the enterprise later confirmed they were not in charge of the 112 management. Operations are driven by Serveo, a Ferrovial independent company, in which Ferrovial has 25% of the shares.