999 is not a joke: National hotline faces barrage of prank, irrelevant calls

Sitting at his desk with headphones on, helpline (999) operator Anik Sen heard the cry of a baby right after he pressed the receive button to attend a distress call.

"Someone might be in danger," he thought immediately, but his concern faded when he heard a woman on the other side asking the baby to stop crying and talk over the phone.

Flabbergasted, Anik asked the reason for the call. "I made the call to calm my baby down," she replied, rather nonchalantly.

As shocking as this may be, this was no isolated incident, as operators of the hotline face calls like this every day. They termed this one of the biggest impediments to providing support to people in actual distress.

Around 67.44 percent of the calls made from December 2017 till January this year were either blank calls, prank calls, missed calls, test calls or repeat calls, according to National Helpline Centre sources.

For female operators at the helpline centre, the job is even more stressful.

"A few days back, as soon as I received a call, the caller said 'Apu, I want to marry you' and started laughing...," said Tasnia Akhter, a female operator at 999.

Sometimes the callers even hurl abusive words at us, she added.

The two first respondents at the helpline desk -- an integrated service of police, fire and ambulance -- said the high number of such "prank calls" creates unnecessary congestion in the system and ultimately deprives the ones who really need the service.

They said adolescents are the biggest abusers of the service.

"Sometimes, teenagers call and say there is a fire incident somewhere, which later turns out to be a hoax. To make things worse, sometimes they'll keep calling, seven to eight times within a few minutes, blocking the lines," said Tasnia.

Officials at the centre said they received around 1.64 lakh calls made by adolescents in 2020, which rose to 2.35 lakh last year.

They blamed the lack of awareness among people about the sensitivity of the service.

Many people even call the hotline to complain about the price hike of essentials, for information about Covid-19 vaccines and seeking help for a problem with their mobile phones, said officials at the emergency service centre.

Last year, a law was enacted to take legal action against abusers of this kind through mobile courts, but no one has been punished yet.

At the same time, the officials said they were reluctant to take any punitive measures against such callers, fearing it might discourage people from making calls for help.

As an alternative, they sometimes block the numbers of such disruptive callers for a certain period of time.

Contacted, Mohammad Tabarak Ullah, chief of  999-service unit, told The Daily Star, "Such calls obstruct our first responders from actual emergencies of people."

The 999 is a toll-free hotline number that allows citizens in trouble to call and ask for police assistance. Citizens can avail a number of services through this helpline, including assistance for any type of crime, accident, abduction, fire, and call for ambulances.

From its inception on December 10, 2017 till January 31, the National Emergency Service has received over 3.53 crore calls.