Fire and Rescue Services personnel talk to students as part of an awareness drive at the recent State School Arts Festival in Kozhikode following a spurt in the number of bogus calls to the free helpline 101.— PHOTO: MITHOSH JOSEPH
Department gets 20 to 30 bogus calls a month
Testing the patience of the Fire and Rescue Services Department, the number of fake calls made to the emergency number 101 is witnessing a strange increase with the irresponsible dialling of the number by children and, often, by the elders too.
Officials of the Kozhikode Beach station say that the distress call facility is used as a tool for entertainment by many. They get an average of 20 to 30 bogus calls a month, they add. In most of the cases, the culprits are children and teenagers, who test all the available toll-free numbers from their parents’ mobile phones or landline numbers.
An absurd situation, according to a senior fireman at the Beach station, is that some women misuse the free helpline to entertain their children while feeding them. “When a child declines to eat, these women ring up the fire station and ask the child to listen to the voice from the other side. We have come across plenty of such instances, and the child is blamed in the end for creating a scene,” he adds.
Officials say that a majority of such fake calls and missed-call alerts emerge from some regions in Malappuram district that are covered by the helpline. The trend shows no let-up even now as some people still believe that it is meant for free entertainment.
Since the department is bound to attend all calls taking into account the gravity of the service, time spent dealing with the bogus ones is seriously spoiling their peace. “Initiating legal action against all the offenders is impractical as they are in large numbers and, moreover, it further wastes the time of the squad that is already hit by manpower shortage. Only through creating proper awareness will we be able to deal with the issue,” the officials say.
They are making use of all possible channels to discourage the undesirable trend and highlight the headache it creates to the entire force. “During the recent State School Arts Festival, we did our best to communicate the message to students and their parents,” they say.
