Rescue 1122 receives over 94% fake calls

Callers ask for biryani recipe, try to engage in chit-chat to kill time

LAHORE: As many as 94.2% of total phone calls received by the Punjab Emergency Service (PES) during 2019 were non-emergency calls or categorised as obnoxious.

Such calls included asking the operator for the biryani recipe and to have chit-chat to kill time.

The emergency service received 20,555,131 calls during 2019 across Punjab. Out of these only 1,192,044 were emergency calls. Rescue 1122 received 19,363,087 calls that were not related to any kind of emergency.

These calls have been categorised as obnoxious (abusing or misbehaving with the operator), information-seeking calls, wrong calls (caller dialled the number mistakenly), irrelevant (the caller asking for unrelated help), fake calls (the caller asked for help but rescuers did not find any emergency situation on the spot), distorted calls etc.

The Provincial Monitoring Cell (PMC) of the service categorised 16,326,436 calls as obnoxious, 2,162,353 as information seeking, 845,980 as wrong calls and 28,318 as fake calls.

The service responded to only 19 fake calls during the year.

An officer shared with The Express Tribune that responding to fake calls consumed a lot of energy as well as resources. Taking notice of the issue, the command of the emergency service directed the rescuers at the control room to identify the fake calls. It transpired that the fake callers have certain characteristics that could be spotted during the call.

Usually, a fake caller calls from a calm and peaceful place and there is no noise of traffic or any sign of hustle and bustle around.

Since the screening began, Rescue 1122’s response (moving emergency teams) to fake calls has reduced drastically.

The service in Lahore received a total of 2,242,965 calls during the year. Only 8% -- 183,866 -- were emergency calls. As many as 2,059,099 calls received during the year were non-emergency. Out of these, 1,641,779 were marked as obnoxious, 284,471 as information seeking, 122,876 as wrong and 9,973 as fake calls.

A few interesting calls

A few of the non-emergency calls to the helpline were very funny. In a call, a woman asked for the recipe to cook Sindhi Biryani. When the operator told the caller that it was an emergency service, she told him that she had found the number from the internet.

Another woman made a call and said Eid Mubarak to the rescuers. When the rescuer told her that it was an emergency service helpline, she requested him not to be annoyed. She said she just had called for some chit-chat to overcome boredom.

In another call, the caller asked the rescuer to deliver a pizza. One caller informed the phone operator that a dog had died in an accident. In one call, minor children could be heard playing. In another, someone dialled the emergency service number and handed over the phone to children while the caller played music in the background.

The Rescue 1122 has appealed to the people to avoid making such calls to the helpline as it hampers the service from its prime duty besides wasting its resources and time.

Making fake calls to such helplines is a crime under the Telegraph Act and other laws. There were instances where cases were also registered. However, the authorities usually refrained from pursuing legal proceedings due to the huge number of calls as taking the cases to the court of law would have been a tedious job.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2020.