Finally, India seems to have woken up to the urgency of having a single emergency response number on the lines of America’s 911. This number may be called for any emergency — police, fire or ambulance.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is planning to bring a consultation paper in this connection soon to kick-start the process of having a single emergency helpline where a call centre will receive all distress calls and then accordingly alert departments or agencies concerned depending upon the type of emergency.
“Today, various states have separate emergency response numbers and in some states even police helpline 100 does not work properly. The Ministry of Home Affairs has also been pushing for a single helpline number in its bid to prepare better for police, fire, medical and other kind of emergencies,” said a senior TRAI official.
“We need a number that could be reached by all types of technologies be it landline, GSM or CDMA. Within next couple of months we will seek opinion from various stakeholders, including Central and state government bodies and private telecom operators, in this connection,” the official said.
Pointing out that the current emergency response system was not appropriate, a senior Ministry of Home Affairs official said it has been observed that people call up emergency number, normally police helpline 100, only to get diverted to other departments, which delays response time. “Having a single emergency number will ensure that a person in distress does not gets diverted to other department or agency…the person manning the emergency number would take the call and then alert the department concerned, say police, fire, medical or disaster management. It will also help fix responsibility if someone is found guilty of any kind of laxity,” the official added.
He further noted that today, there were separate emergency numbers and helplines in most states. For instance, for police a person dials 100 and 101 for fire emergency. Similarly, for medical emergency the helpline is 102 or 108 in many states. “But there is no single helpline as in the U.S. where a person just needs to dial 911 to get immediate help. Interestingly, if someone dials 911 and then hangs up, the call centre person calls that number back to check if everything was ok…We also need to have a similar system in India,” he added.
“We want to make the new emergency mechanism a hi-tech one where all calls would be registered in a computerised system that would track the geographic location of the caller and then alert the closest PCR, fire or ambulance fitted with GPS system to reduce response time. All this would have to be completed within a standard response time,” he said.
Keywords: TRAI, all India helpline, single emergency response number
While this is a laudable step,there is no guaranty that the response would be immediate.Technological improvements and advancements unless accompanied by humanness to appreciate the emergency that has compelled a member of the public to call for assistance,will be of no avail so long as the assistance does not reach expeditiously.The staff on call should be a dedicated lot if the service is to be effective.Mere lip service or setting up a system will not help.
It would impressive if they were also forward thinking and made this
"call center" ALSO accessible via an internet website/email. Going by
current trends in smartphones, communicating via the internet could
become easier than dialing a phone number. Also other net connected
devices like tablets which cannot make phone calls would also be able to
call for help in an emergency.
A number isn't enough. We need educated attendants who can pick up and appreciate the seriousness of a call, a police force and ambulance team armed and prepared to get to the scene within minutes, a sea of traffic that yields to the emergency responders and citizens who are ready to pay their share of taxes to fund this service. Is India ready ? I am ready.
In India first of all many of the phone lines do not work properly. Secondly what is going to be the preferred language for the caller to use in time of emergency? There are more than twenty five regional languages spoken by people. Thirdly how the receiver of the call at the command center will decide as to which precinct he has to transfer the call so that response teams will reach with in ten minutes. Lot of coordination is required. In U.S whenever there is a call in case of fire, the ambulance also goes with trained paramedics.
This is a very welcome move. It is very important that they follow up with this and ensure that the unified number service is state-of-the-art. If call records could be used as evidence in police cases, like in the US, this system could also help fight police corruption.
Rightly said...
100,101,108 nos were introduced initially for the welfare of the people , however it found to be useless in later stage since the calls were not answered .
Hope this 911 common helpline /emergency no would be in answered and benefited all.
Progress ... that's what i've waited for!
We should have taken this step earlier!
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