Dial 100 in an emergency! But these days, it seems the emergency could be anything from barking dogs to personal woes, and the ones confused by the flood of calls are the city police.
Over the past three months, the Bengaluru police control room has been flooded with callers asking about mobile recharge options and other civic-related issues.
Blame it on the new emergency universal number (112), which was started as a pilot project in the city.
Robin Poddar, General Manager, BSNL (IT, Grievance Management) admitted that there is a problem. The BSNL call centre is diverting all calls from 112 to the police control room instead of to the department concerned.
On an average, the police control room gets 40,000 calls a day, but over the last few months, 17,000 are about unrelated issues. “Every distress call takes at least 15 minutes to resolve, as we also keep track of the patrolling Hoysala vehicles. But nowadays, I’m getting calls about choked drains,” said one control command centre staffer. The city police command centre has shot off a letter to BSNL, their service provider, to withdraw the pilot project until the problems are ironed out. “We have raised the issue with BSNL twice. Now, we have written to them warning that we will find a new service provider it it’s not rectified,” said M. G. Nagendra Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (command centre).
Mr. Poddar told The Hindu that the matter has been communicated to higher-ups, as it has to be taken up with the home ministry.
