LAHORE, Dec 30: The Punjab Emergency and Ambulance Service (PEAS), commonly known as Rescue 1122, is planning to change the status of its toll-free call to local call charges in view of 99 per cent prank calls.
Speaking at a news conference at the Rescue 1122 central station on Ferozepur Road on Friday, PEAS project-director Dr Rizwan Naseer revealed that the massive number of obnoxious calls was greatly affecting the service’s prompt response to emergencies in the city. He said the PEAS received complaints that the toll-free number 1122 remained busy all the time and caused problems at the site of emergencies.
Dr Naseer said the PEAS had, since its establishment, received over two million calls only 17,203 of which were genuine. He said the Rescue 1122 staff attended the genuine calls and rescued 15,000 people. The service’s average response time was seven minutes, he added.
He said the PEAS had repeatedly advertized the issue of prank calls to create more awareness in the public, but it showed negative results as the number of such calls increased from 7,000 to 9,500 daily. He said the situation was affecting the emergency service. As a result of so many calls, he said, the PEAS’ call recording system frequently got jammed and failed to record and monitor calls for quality assurance.
During the last few months, Dr Naseer said the PEAS had tried several solutions, including blocking of such obnoxious callers, warning on phone and telling the callers about the significance of emergency number and how their wrong calls could cause failure of provision of emergency service to the genuine victims of emergencies that might result in deaths.
In view of the situation and consequent measures, he said the PEAS was considering to impose local call charges instead of offering toll-free call at 1122 to reduce the number of obnoxious calls.
Answering a question, Dr Naseer said the control room of the Rescue 1122 was receiving 9,500 calls daily, including 99 per cent unwanted calls.
Giving a breakdown of prank calls, he said, 22 per cent calls were made by girls, 10 per cent calls were tagged as abusive and gossip. Similarly, he said, eight per cent calls were made by children while another eight per cent were noted as musical calls as the callers placed the phone set near the television or tape-recorders.
He said it was a matter of grave concern that the Rescue 1122 also received almost six per cent calls from mobile repairing shops, who just wanted to check the voice quality of their phone sets. He said the remaining 35 per cent calls were regarded as miscellaneous.
The PEAS administrator regretted that there were some regular pranksters, who made not less than 500 calls in a day just for fun. He said the respect for an emergency number was ethical responsibility of every citizen and they should dial an emergency number only in case of emergency.