Caught in an emergency? Dial 108 and you have the ambulance rush to your doorstep, paramedical staff and all.
Now, how do the police fare as far as emergency services go?
Leaving much to be desired
Sadly, despite their mammoth fleet of patrol vehicles, latest communication systems and manpower, the police fail to match up to their paramedical brethren. Delay in responding to distress calls is one of the reasons for the increasing societal antipathy towards the police.
Moreover, the peculiar practice of making the victim make a trip to the police station to file an FIR and the disinclination to register cases have caused the general public considerable consternation, enough to make anyone dread going to a station.
In a bid to tackle these issues, the State police have outlined an ambitious plan, to be launched shortly.
Call 100, from anywhere
The plan includes setting up a centralised ‘Dial-100’ call centre in Hyderabad, which can be accessed from any corner of the State and from any telephone. Currently, the 100 services are not fully functional and calls made to this popular number are received at the headquarters of the district concerned.
At places where the service is not operational, people are expected to call up the local police station and remembering these numbers is always a problem. Secondly, in the absence of any monitoring of distress calls made, the accountability of responding immediately is not fixed on the policemen.
The centralised ‘Dial-100’ call centre seeks to set things right by minimising the response time. The call centre is to be set up in the EMRI facility in Medchal, which operates the 108 ambulance services. The call centre would be manned by policemen and will function at EMRI till a technical centre comes up behind the DGP’s office.
Going hi-tech
On receiving a call, the staff instantly locates the area from which the call using GIS and GPS technology. They would then connect to the control room of the district concerned, which would in turn flash messages to the nearest police patrol vehicle or station.
The conversation will be recorded and the patrol team is expected to inform the control rooms of the action initiated. The facility is likely to be opened on Ugadi (April 11) by Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy.
“Our idea is to reduce the response time. The most important thing is that the complaint would be taken on the spot and an FIR issued. This would leave no scope for the police to delay or refuse issuing an FIR,” says DGP V. Dinesh Reddy. Nowhere, but in India, is the victim expected to go to a police station to lodge a complaint. If all goes according to plan, the State could well become a trailblazer.
