LAHORE: The performance review of Rescue 15 has pointed out that police received 1.413 million bogus and meaningless calls out of total 1.610 million till Dec 29 in the current year.

Only 197,364 calls turned out to be genuine and police rescued the victims with 95.7 per cent ratio.

According to a press release, a meeting held on Sunday with Mujahid and Mobiles SP Muhammad Masoom in the chair decided to arrange awareness programmes about importance of Rescue 15 among citizens and children very soon.

The decision was taken to educate people not to dial the number for unnecessary, fake and obnoxious calls.

The in-charge Rescue 15 centre told the meeting that some people had been making unnecessary calls on 15 and wasting time.

The SP issued directive to his force to register maximum cases against such persons and bring them to justice.

Dawn investigations show that citizens who are able to call Rescue 15 in emergencies have either to face delayed response or no-response in some cases.

Najam Rafique of Model Town said two robbers looted cash and his cell phone near Mini Market in early hours of Dec 24. He reached his nearby office in two to three minutes and called Rescue 15. The official listened to him and advised him to reach the respective police station instead of sending policemen on the spot.

Rafique said according to his information usually policemen rushed to the spot in nine minutes, record the statement of victim and start efforts to trace the suspects.

A police official said out of 7,000 calls received on a daily basis, up to 700 calls were genuine.

He said delayed response and arrival of policemen on crime scene was due to transfer of operational control from Mujahid to local police.

“The Mujahid Force has only 10 vehicles and 50 motorcycles for city and Rescue 15 staff shifts calls to the local police station for dispatching emergency vehicles,” he said, adding Mujahid Force was responsible for administration and running Rescue 15 centre.

He claimed though police lodged cases against obnoxious callers especially in cases of fake calls of bomb blasts and presence of bombs somewhere, it was difficult to trace them as they used either PCO numbers or non-registered SIMs.