By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The trend of making hoax calls to the toll free emergency number – 108 has now taken a new turn with school students now being found dialing up the number for the sake of making free calls.
At present, this trend is very popular in the city where majority of the prank calls received are mostly from school students. Previously, most of the hoax calls used to come from men who were only interested in hearing a female voice on the other end of the line.
“The earlier trend has come down now, though it has not stopped but at present we are faced with a bigger problem. School students are now found to be making prank calls for the sake of dialing a free toll number,” GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) Programme Manager Dipankar Choudhury told The Shillong Times on Tuesday.
The call centre has been receiving a number of prank calls on the toll-free number 108 of late, creating difficulty in discharging of its duties.
On several occasions, emergency ambulances have been sent to locations where there was no actual emergency.
Choudhury informed that the number of prank calls received varies from one month to another and it averages between 20-30 per cent usually. “Last month, there was an average of 20 per cent prank calls and majority of them were made by school students,” he added.
Since Meghalaya shares a common telecom circle with the rest of the northeast except Assam, Choudhury stated that they even receive prank calls from faraway states like Tripura and Mizoram.
“The highest number of hoax calls usually comes from Tripura,” he informed.
The GVK programme manager also mentioned that efforts have been made by the centre to track down these numbers and their owners from time to time.
“We educate the caller by connecting him to the IVR where a message about the 108 services can be heard by the caller. However, if the same number pops up again while making a prank call we would block the number for some time,” he said.
Urging parents and guardians to inform their children/ wards about the consequences of making hoax calls to emergency services, Choudhury said, “We have also spoken to the local headmen to take stock of the matter in case there are any prank calls being made and wrong information being dispersed from the particular locality.”
