Smoke signals: Hitting the snooze button on SOS calls

‘Response to distress calls being affected due to increasing prank calls’.

SIALKOT:

The growing number of the prank calls made by people to the Rescue 15 system has made it nearly impossible for the rescue service to operate effectively in the area.

“The situation is getting worse each day. Nearly all the calls we receive are fake and we have stopped answering half the phones. The attitude of these people means that it is nearly impossible to help people in real emergencies,” said call centre operative Shagufta Khawar.

District Police Officer (DPO) Sialkot Syed Ali Mohsin disclosed this while talking to reporters on Wednesday. Mohsin said that Rescue 15 Sialkot received an average of 5,000 distress calls every day and over 4,900 of these calls usually proved to be fake. “We have had calls where the people on the line claimed there was a fire and we reached the scene to discover they wanted us to help them recover their salary from their bosses,” he said. “It has come to a point where we now just assume that people calling in are lying because we can never know when there is a genuine need. If this continues it will render the system completely useless,” he added.

The DPO said that this situation was affecting other rescue efforts as well.

“Prank calls are part of the reason even ambulances in the area have stopped attending some calls because they assume the people on the other end are lying. This means that someone who genuinely needs the help could easily be overlooked,” he added.

According to residents in Sialkot, Rescue 15 is negligent.

“I have called them several times. One time during a robbery bid at my house and no one came. Now they are blaming it on prank callers, how does that justify ignoring a distress call?” said Meera Naseem Khan.

Rescue officials on the other hand said that they were tired of arriving at a scene to find out that nothing was wrong.

“I have lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to a scene expecting a fire or a robbery and there was nothing there. Sometimes the prank callers give us the address of a remote field,” said Rescue 15 operative Anwar Khalid.

Rescue workers also said that over 90 per cent of the calls they received came from districts other than Sialkot. “There are long-standing telephone line problems here and Rescue 15 Sialkot receives an average of 5,000 calls daily but some of these are from completely different districts,” Majeeda Qasim said.

She said that there are eight telephone lines in Rescue 15 Sialkot out of which one line had been lying out of order for the past nine months.  There is one inspector, one sub inspector, two ASIs and 13 police constables deputed at the Rescue 15 Sialkot centre and most of the officials said that the system was collapsing because of prank calls.

In Daska, the Rescue 15 system has also become ineffective due to mismanagement. The centre only has one official police vehicle, which often remains busy escorting VIPs and serving in protocol parties for politicians.

“In the case of an emergency there is no other vehicle at Rescue 15 Daska so we don’t know what to do.

We usually just ignore the calls to avoid the matter,” said a rescue worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

PTCL authorities at Sialkot and Gujranwala, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged the problem of out-district calls being faced by Rescue 15 Sialkot and said that they were trying to take steps to make the calling system more secure.

“We cannot do anything about calls being made through mobile telephone numbers as only the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority can block such calls but even they won’t block any calls to a rescue authority,” he said. PPI

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2011.