Over 12 lakh calls made to Dial-100 during lockdown period

Hyderabad, Apr 8 (PTI): A total of 12,82,559 calls were received by 'Dial-100, which is Telangana police emergency response number, from March 21 (a day before Janata Curfew) till April 7, officials said on Wednesday. Before the lockdown, the 'Dial-100 system used to get on an average of about 28,000-30,000 calls per day, of which about 4,000emergency call were sent to police stations each day, the officials said.

The number of calls rose after Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had announced that people can 'Dial-100 for any emergency following which on an average over 70,000 calls were received by the service every day, they said. "We have received a total of 12,82,559 calls from March 21 till April 7 and out of this as many as 2,73,599 calls were transferred from IVRS and 78,897 emergency calls were dispatched to police stations, a senior official told PTI.

While as many as 2,625 calls were related to COVID-19 suspected cases a total of 20,613 calls were related to the lockdown pertaining to mass gathering, transport issue, non- availability of food among others, the official said. A total of 82,970 were enquiry calls; 86,094 calls were attributed to silent, nuisance, prank and (also those dialed by) children while playing and categorised as ineffective calls.

Due to such ineffective calls the genuine emergency calls are getting missed or delayed as all lines are busy, the official said. The Dial-100 system is fitted with an IVRS (interactive voice response system) ensuring that the fake calls and unnecessary calls are filtered as the caller has to follow a pre-recorded voice with instructions and press a button after which the emergency calls gets transferred from IVRS, the official explained.

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