Surayia Jannat Sumi, an inhabitant of the capital's Mohammadpur area has said that she once called emergency service phone number 999 to complain about loud noise coming from a close by apartment while her younger sister was doing studies for exams.
Following her complaint, police personnel from Mohammadpur Thana visited the apartment and stopped the loud music. Towhidujjaman Tonmoy, who witnessed a road accident during Eid holidays communicated with 999 to report the mishap. He received help within 30 minutes.
Such response from the emergency service is highly appreciable. However, data from Telecom and Information Management Unit of Bangladesh Police shows that they have received around 37 lakh phone calls to 999 since the service was launched in December 2017.
Out of these 37 lakh phone calls, 24 lakh calls came which are unnecessary or bogus or just from curious people. 18 lakh callers did not say anything over phone while 6 lakh callers told useless things while speaking to 999, BBC reports with references to Telecom and Information Management Unit of Bangladesh Police. In terms of these figures, 65% phone calls to 999 were not at all important.
Additional Deputy Inspector General of Police Iqbal Bahar said to BBC, "Many people call 999 but they do not say anything. There are some unwanted calls to 999 which do not state any necessary information or complaint."
On the other hand, a restaurant owner from Bangla Motor area of Dhaka told that he once called 999 to complaint against extortion. The recipient of the call gave him the local police station's contact number.
He then contacted the duty officer of that police station. The duty officer first said Bangla Motor does not come under his jurisdiction.
When the officer admitted that Bangla Motor is within his official area, he showed excuses of being too busy. Later on the complainant had to settle up the situation by paying money to the extortionists as he got no help from police, according to BBC.
At present 70 employees work at 999 call centers. It is being considered to increase the number of employees to 100, police officers have said. Reportedly police took approximately 30 minutes to reach the spot wherefrom calls for help came to 999. Thirty minutes is too long in case of emergency service because a lot of things may go wrong within half an hour.
Additional DIG Iqbal Bahar has blamed traffic jams and shortage of vehicles and insufficient policemen for taking so long to arrive at the location of the callers. Efforts are on to reduce response time to 20 minutes, he told BBC.
Iqbal Bahar also informed that General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) would be installed on all transports of police department to enable faster delivery of help to people in trouble. He added that it is being considered to impose penalty on frequent blank callers who do not say necessary things over phone or just talk nonsense.
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