In times of crises, reaching the emergency response system phone numbers sometimes becomes an ordeal.
One is lucky if he or she gets a call through to these numbers.
People often reach for the phone to call the Police Control Room, Fire Service Control Room or the Tamil Nadu Generation Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) in the event of a distress or emergency situation.
With the arrival of mobile phones and services offered by various service providers, the problems in easy access to emergency numbers has become all the more complicated due to various technicalities involved.
Calls from other districts landing at Coimbatore City Police control room or for that matter Fire and Rescue Services Control room in the city will neither benefit the caller, the police/ fire service personnel. It would only lead to waste of time and in fact delay the response to the person genuinely in distress.
Similarly, crank calls will only result in keeping the phone busy, leaving genuine callers wringing their hands in despair.
The situation is slightly comfortable with Emergency and Medical Research Institute (EMRI) that provides ambulance services with the toll free number 108.
EMRI's centralised call centre at Chennai gets close to 15,000 to 20,000 calls per day but has never faced the problem of non-jurisdiction calls as it has a clearly demarcated service area for each district and every ambulance.
However, of the total number of calls, only 15 to 20 per cent are emergency calls seeking ambulance services.
Others are either enquiry or blank calls.
EMRI has started filtering such calls by marking such phone numbers and routing them to Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) keeping the system free to take calls from persons genuinely in distress, says H. Mohan, Regional Manager of EMRI.
Additional Divisional Fire and Rescue Services Officer P. Krishnamurthy and Station Fire Officer P. Annadurai say that their control room has two BSNL lines (toll free number 101) and one of Aircel.
They point out that on holidays, Saturdays and Sundays, children tend to call these numbers.
Sometimes, persons under the influence of liquor call up and create nuisance and even abuse personnel manning these phones.
Coimbatore City Police control room has six lines that have been digitalized and hooked to the modern control room to receive distress calls (see graphics).
An unnecessary call i.e., hoax, prank, or blank calls could keep the line busy, delaying help to a person genuinely in need of help.
The control room earlier used to get nearly 3,000 calls a day and only 250 of them were genuine.
As the cellular service providers have Coimbatore as their headquarters for the operations in the rest of Tamil Nadu, almost all of them have their routers at Coimbatore as a gateway for the calls to exit and enter.
This had led to calls from Tirunelveli, Virudhunagar, Theni and Pudukottai landing here as the switching equipment recognised the Coimbatore Police Control room as the nearest Distress Response System number.
After discussions with the cellular operators, modifications were carried out in the switches and the problem has been sorted out to a very great extent.
Mr. Pujari's efforts has also synchronised the functioning of the Emergency Response System, Surveillance Unit and Traffic Monitoring to ensure a swift response to calls within three to four minutes.
Mr. Pujari is also planning to have an automated call handling system in place soon that will reveal the name and address of the caller and indicate the availability of the nearest patrol vehicle or squad to ensure swift response from the police.
In case of power supply breakdown, fuse off calls, etc, electricity consumers dial 155333 to register their complaint at the 24x7 call centre which functions at the Tatabad Power House premises.
Consumers say it is difficult to register their complaint on this number because the line is busy on most occasions.
Superintending Engineer of Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation, Coimbatore Metro, A.D. Thirumoorthy says the call centres have four lines and three persons on duty at any point of time.
The centre receives nearly 100 calls a day and most of these are attended to within 24 hours. Consumers call from Coimbatore city and the fringe areas such as Vadavalli, Thudiyalur and Kuniamuthur.
“The service is available for the last three years. Consumers can call from landline or mobile numbers. Those calling from non-BSNL mobile numbers should dial the area STD code (0422) and then the number. We now call back the ‘missed call' numbers and take down the complaint.
“In an effort to make the system more effective, officials shortlist 10 complaints daily and call the consumers again to get their feedback.
“Consumers call the respective sub-station too to register their complaint. This is an additional number,” he adds.
