Hoax calls on ‘108, 102’ risk lives

Dipender Manta

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Mandi, January 11

Hoax calls on emergency ambulance service ‘108 &102’ is endangering the lives of people and property in the state, which requires immediate and strict dealing with offenders under law.

Data availed by The Tribune from Service provider GVK EMRI (Emergency Management and Research Institute), Himachal Pradesh, revealed that out of 10 calls made on ‘108 & 102’, five were hoax calls.

Talking to The Tribune GVK EMRI state head Mehul Sukumaran said, “Making hoax calls on ‘108 & 102’endangers lives of people and property. When a false call is made, it ties up the emergency lines, thereby preventing someone with a real emergency from contacting the emergency service.

As a result, time is wasted and a genuine emergency caller faces delay in re-connecting to ‘108 & 102’. Time is often the key factor in saving someone’s life or property, and if the emergency service is unnecessarily delayed from getting to where they are needed, the result could be tragedy.”

“The GVK EMRI Himachal team has identified few numbers from which more than 150 ineffective calls (nuisance or abusive calls) had been received last year till December 31. According to the call detail data last year, 53.6 per cent calls were hoax, which require punitive action to be taken against offenders to curb the menace” he remarked.

He said as an immediate step, the officials at GVK EMRI regularly counsel the nuisance callers by making them understand the importance of ‘108 & 102’ number. Repeat nuisance callers are further counselled by police officers sitting at the 108 Emergency Response Centre, Solan.

“Due to hoax calls disturbance, EMRI managers may clog lines for people who really need them. Besides prank calls, cases where the caller is silent or abusive, and where calls cannot be connected due to poor signals and wrong numbers are termed ineffective. The percentage of unanswered calls has increased from 0.19 per cent in 2016 to 0.27 per cent till December 31 last year due to these unwanted and unnecessary calls” he said.

He said every call received by “108 & 102” Emergency Service is responded as important and as an emergency “life saving” call.

Operators are trained to collect information such as kind of injury, place of accident or address of the victim and symptoms from callers in less than 90 seconds to provide the ambulance service.

He said to prevent such ineffective calls, GVK EMRI ‘108 & 102’ has also initiated various awareness campaigns so as to spread this message loud and clear.

“I appeal to all the people that “We work with passion to serve people. Our services will be more efficient and effective if these ineffective calls reduce. So every person should cooperate with the authority and avoid such nuisance in the near future” he added.

What may happen when false call is made

• It ties up the emergency lines
• Prevents someone with a real emergency from contacting the emergency service 
• As a result, time is wasted and a genuine emergency caller faces delay in re-connecting to ‘108 & 102’
• Time is often the key factor in saving someone’s life or property
• And if the emergency service is unnecessarily delayed, 
• The result could be tragedy