Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Pointing out a major flaw in the system of Dial 100 integrated emergency response system the CAG report which was tabled in the state assembly on Friday, states a missed call desk was not set up, which was required, hence the department didn’t act on more than 80 lakh phone calls received annually, to check if the calls were blank, prank or inappropriate.
The report says the ACS Home agreed that contact should have been established with the caller, in case of call disconnected. as there was possibility that the caller was not in a position to continue the call.
The report says, “In the duration 2016-19 as many as 102.9 lakh (phone) calls were received on Dial 100 annually out of which 20.7 lakh calls were found worth action to be taken. Remaining 82.2 lakh calls which is 80% of the total calls were categorized as blank, prank, inappropriate calls or the calls where address couldn’t be found. The department didn’t review the calls to see if the calls not found appropriate to take action on were really such calls which didn’t warrant any action.”
“Dial 100 had a missed call desk provision which was supposed to verify the missed call through first response vehicle. From wherever such a call was received at least three callbacks were to be made. If the phone number was found switched off or out of network coverage are action was warranted on such calls. We found that missed call desk was not set up during 2015-2020 and no action was taken on missed or blank calls”, states the report.
Notably, as per the report, Introduced with the cost of more than Rs 632 crore across the state for 24x7 service from November 1,2015, Dial 100 integrated emergency response system (ERS) by police failed to act fast when called for help by people while the project management advisor engaged with cost of Rs 72 lakh annually failed in certain duties.
The first response vehicle (FRV) was supposed to reach the spot in urban areas within 5 minutes and the same in rural areas within 30 minutes. However, the average response time in urban areas was found to be 24 minutes and in rural areas 56 minutes.
“We noticed that there was delay in response even in heinous crime cases like rape, attempt to rape, kidnapping, domestic violence etc. There was no noticeable improvement in response time in emergency situations during the period of 2016-19. This delay made futile the objective of the system”, states the report.
