Sitting inside the dim-lit halls of the 108 Emergency Response Services' call centre in Triplicane, 24-year-old T.Vairamani received a call about a fortnight ago from a little girl who she would later on describe as someone with a “child-like voice”. The girl said her grandmother had died. There was complete silence for the next three seconds.
Even as Ms.Vairamani was preparing to alert an ambulance to triangulate the girl's position and rush to the spot, the voice on the phone laughed heartily and disconnected the call. The girl would call more than a 100 times that day and repeat exactly what she did the first time.
Such nuisance or prank calls have become so common that many of the anonymous voices even have their own nicknames – like Cuddalore Selvam or social service Mariappan. Of the 25,000 medical emergency calls that the toll-free 108 helpline receives from across the State each day, nearly 85 per cent are categorised as “unproductive”.
Children are responsible for the maximum number of nuisance calls, accounting for over two lakh calls in just the last six months. “When school holidays are announced, we go on alert,” says Ms.Vairamani. She has been on the job for two years and she still remembers the first abusive call that she got. “I cried on the floor that day. I guess some men feel powerful when they get to abuse a woman. Drunken persons are especially difficult to handle,” she says.
While most of the abusive calls come from rural areas, the educated urban populace resorts to bomb threats, says Ms.Vairamani, containing a smile.
“The most dangerous and merciless are the hoax calls,” says B. Prabhudoss, regional manager of EMRI, which operates the 108 ambulance service.
All emergency calls received by 108 are passed on to an ambulance. The paramedic in the ambulance then keeps in touch with the caller and if required, gives advice on how to administer first-aid. Hoax callers direct the ambulance towards a false emergency. P.Chandrasekar, an emergency medical technician with the 108 ambulance service, says: “Many times, I have responded to calls about a man or woman fainting on the Marina beach. Initially, the caller would give vague directions and then switch off the phone.” Such calls keeps the ambulance busy instead of it being used for a genuine emergency.
Many repeat callers have been cornered by 108 personnel, but no one admits to the crime. “When we take a list of numbers to the police, they say even their control room number ‘100' gets about 600 prank calls a day,” says Mr. Prabhudoss.
Number portability and other factors have made it difficult to trace every single caller. As a result, even temporary helplines such as the one set up by the Chennai Corporation last month ahead of the civic polls are targeted. “In the long run, we need a regulatory framework to set up mobile phone tracking systems such as the one that 911 [in the US] has,” he says.
For now, in response to a record 1,473 calls made on a single day by a person from Cuddalore, EMRI has set up a system that blocks more than five calls from the same number in a day. “But it is temporary,” Mr.Prabhudoss says. “The number is released within three days. Some of the callers are psychologically depressed or alcoholics. But even they or their family members might face a genuine emergency. It is unfair to block anyone.”
