What will run through a resident’s mind if his doorbell rings at 3 a.m. and when he’s not expecting anyone at that hour? What if the resident is a woman living alone? Instinctively, people don’t open their door to strangers.
At Ceebros Belvedere, a premium gated community at Classic Farms in Sholinganallur, there is tight security, largely made possible by a network of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras that has all vantage points covered. Despite such a robust security measure, a resident of the community had to go through the afore-mentioned experience a few days ago, at 3 a.m., when her doorbell rang. The resident did not open the door and called the security guard over the intercom.
Unfortunately, the security guard could speak only in Tamil and not in Hindi or English, the languages known to her. The resident brought this incident to the notice of the executive committee of Ceebros Belvedere Owners’ Association, which manages this community of 256 apartments spread over four acres.
Upon scrutiny of the CCTV footage, it was found that a sleepy neighbour returning from work at 3 a.m. had inadvertently rung the doorbell of the resident and that it was not an external security breach. While this issue was trivial and laid to rest peacefully, the executive committee members were sensitive to the larger issue — how language barrier was preventing effective communication in times of crises.
Often, the language barrier makes effective communication between such residents and security personnel impossible. Further, in these communities, there are senior citizens, women and people with other challenges, who have no one to reach for immediate help other than security guards and neighbours, in the event of an electrical or kitchen fire, medical emergencies, snakes or rodent intrusion at home.
Overcoming a hurdle
Following this incident, we took a series of measures, which included ensuring a heterogeneous linguistic composition of the security and maintenance teams.
Further, an emergency number “9999” was set up on the intercom with a caller line identification instrument deployed at the security guards’ desk. The protocol was that a security guard has to physically report to the apartment within the next five minutes based on the caller identification whether the resident speaks or not.
This was a separate intercom terminal such that it is always available as a hotline (24/7).
Implementing “9999” has been extremely helpful. Now, people can summon the security guards in times of distress even if they are unable to converse with them over the intercom in a common language.
This has helped overcome the language barrier.
Currently, Ceebros Belvedere is assembling an emergency response team of residents who would be immediately alerted by the security guard after assessing the kind of distress the resident is in. We have also proposed to have resident doctors in the team, along with other residents who would be trained in basic lifesaving, fire-fighting, first-aid and evacuation techniques.
The Association is keen on driving this agenda with the full participation of the residents and proposes to have periodic workshops, training camps and mock drills to help people gear up for emergency response.
(Kiran Gupta is the president of Ceebros Belvedere Owners’ Association)
