KENYA: The re-launched 999 emergency lines are already reporting hundreds of prank calls, adding to the frustration of staff manning the call centre in Nairobi. This has raised doubts over how effective the service will be.
“We need the public to understand the importance of emergency lines,” says Wilfred Mbithi, the Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of operations Nairobi Area. “We have a lot of problems with people misusing these lines. You pick up the phone and the caller has nothing to tell you.
“Others will call and say ‘Nilikuwa nataka kukusalimia(I just wanted to say hello)”. Others will insult you while others will ask questions about Safaricom, thinking this is an information line. Others are allowing small children to make calls.”
On July 10, a Nairobi High Court ordered theCommunications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the police and mobile phone service operators to restore the emergency response number 999 by the end of the month. The order follows a suit by Okiya Omtatah, who had sued the National Police Service, the Attorney General, the CCK, the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC) and mobile operators Yu Mobile, Orange, Airtel and Safaricom, who he argued needed to give reasons as to why the service had been discontinued.
The emergency service is expected to help the police fight soaring crime in the country. Yesterday Mbithi said the emergency line service continues to operate.
“I am not aware of any court order, I have not seen it,” he says.
The operation centre, located off Ngong Road, is a restricted security access area manned by close to 15 police officers. The control room is littered with outdated and old telephone lines, screen monitors that don’t work and a collection of radio monitors. A large map of Nairobi overlooks the expansive room.
Yesterday for the first time, the media was allowed access to the emergency centre to watch the officers in action. The centre has two hot lines complementing the 999 emergency lines – 020 272 4154 and 020 355 6771. The phone rings incessantly.
Officers say they receive an average of 1,000 calls per day. Out of these, only three can be counted as real emergencies on average.
Hundreds of prank calls received at the centre have become a nightmare for the police: “I am appealing to the public to call only on emergency cases… so that those with real problems can be able to access the police,” says Mbithi.
I sat for close to half an hour watching officers inundated with hundreds of calls. The officers answer the calls quickly with: “999, what is your emergency?” or “999, can I help you?”
Prank calls
Virtually all of them were prank calls or non-emergency calls. I listened in on a call from: A child who laughed on the line then disconnected; a woman who said she was idle at home and wanted to chat; a caller who had a problem with a phone service provider and a male caller who breathed heavily into the handset then disconnected. “We go through this every day,” says Police Constable Joseph Kiama, who works at the call centre. “It’s such a waste of time. It’s almost a hazard to our health.”
PC Irene Apudo says most callers have absolutely no emergency and many call with issues related to their phone providers. “We get many calls for Safaricom and Airtel,” she says. “On average you can receive 10 calls a minute.”
The relaunched centre has many challenges and Mbithi is calling on the public and private sector to work with the police to improve the service. For a start, the centre is currently equipped to take emergency calls from Nairobi only. But anyone dialing 999 from outside Nairobi will have their calls sent here.
“We cannot help them because the system is not yet upgraded to triage calls to, say, Mombasa or Kisumu,” Mbithi says. Ordinarily, an emergency call made from outside Nairobi should be sent to the nearest police station. He adds that a technical team is working on this but could not provide a time frame.
In addition, most of the handsets at the centre are analog, which means they cannot read the number of the emergency caller: If somebody with a real emergency calls and is disconnected, the centre cannot call that person back or find their location.
In the West, emergency assistants at emergency centres often have access to callers’ numbers and can even locate them on a map.
The centre can then send the call to the police, fire or ambulance services, depending on the emergency. In many parts of the US, average response time for county police and fire is ten minutes: If they are late, you can complain to your local government.
The US 911 system handles 500,000 calls daily. One in four calls are from wireless phones. For first time prank or phantom callers who abuse the system, police send information packets to enlighten them about importance of emergency calls only. When crank callers persist, a system of graduated sanctions, such as fines, or jail is implemented. In many communities in the US, making false or harassing 911 calls is a prosecutable offense, punishable with a fine or jail time.
Mbithi says CCK has not enacted laws to address abuse of the system.
Source The Standard
