At a time when everyone is talking about making the national emergency helpline service more efficient—so that more people can get emergency help within the shortest possible time—we came across the news of a family in Dhaka's Jatrabari area being tortured by police after seeking help by calling 999 (The Daily Star, April 17, 2022). The incident will, no doubt, discourage people from calling the helpline in case of an emergency. Although the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) suspended three police officials following the incident and recommended departmental action against the Ansar member involved, the episode has definitely put this emergency service's efficacy under question.

We would like to believe that this was an isolated incident and does not represent the services provided by police in emergency situations in any way. However, the service is riddled with a host of problems that need to be addressed going forward.

The helpline, 999—a toll-free number which allows citizens in trouble to call and ask for help from police, fire service or ambulance service providers in case of any emergencies—was officially launched on December 12, 2017. Till January 31 this year, the helpline has received over 35.3 million calls. The number is impressive, but were all of these calls actually made seeking help from the service? The answer is no. According to the National Helpline Centre sources, around 67.44 percent of the calls made during this time were either blank calls, prank calls, missed calls, test calls or repeat calls.

Who are these people making these calls, creating unnecessary congestion in the system? According to the helpline operators, in most of the cases, these calls are made by adolescents. According to a female operator of the helpline, sometimes teenagers call and say, for instance, that there is a fire incident somewhere, which later turns out to be a hoax. According to a report in this daily, the helpline received around 164,000 calls made by adolescents in 2020, which rose to 235,000 calls last year. Reportedly, this is one of the biggest barriers in providing support to people in actual distress.

The question that comes next is: Did the remaining 32.56 percent of the callers receive any help from the service? The answer to this question is also a resounding no. Why? Because a majority of the callers did not have any clue about what types of services the helpline actually provided. Reportedly, callers often complain about the price hike of essentials, seek information about Covid-19 vaccines or make random queries to solve problems with their mobile phones.

Moreover, female operators of the helpline often have to face abusive comments and questions from the callers, as reported by this daily.

The problems mentioned above have arisen mostly from the lack of awareness among people about the nature and sensitivity of the emergency helpline. It seems strange as to why the authorities have not been able to take the measures needed in more than four years of its operation to make people aware of the services available through the helpline. It should not have been difficult for them to educate the ordinary people about the importance of this life-saving service as the news and social media could have been utilised for the purpose.

Beside these problems, there are some other issues that impede upgrading the emergency helpline according to international standards. One of them is slow response time. Reportedly, while the average response time of the 999 unit in Bangladesh is about 20 minutes, it is only seven minutes in countries such as the US, the UK, and Japan. This is because the helpline's operating system is outdated, and there is also a manpower crisis. Currently, everything—from pinpointing the locations of service-seekers, to communicating with the various service providers to finally assigning a team to help the callers—is done manually, which is not only time-consuming, but also makes the service inefficient.

Thus, to make the helpline more efficient, there is no alternative to installing an automatic caller identification and location system, which can locate a caller's exact address instantly and cut down the response time significantly. Why it has not been done yet, despite repeated assurances from the authorities, is anyone's guess.

The helpline unit currently receives around 30,000 calls a day, which is difficult to attend with its existing manpower. While the unit needs to have the capacity to take at least 500 calls at a time, it currently has the capacity to take only 100 calls. Therefore, in order for the system to function smoothly, more manpower needs to be recruited for the service.

After the helpline was introduced in 2017, we came across several cases of successful intervention through its use. We came to know how police in Chattogram prevented a child marriage after receiving a call at 999 (The Daily Star, December 14, 2017). In another incident in 2018, a ferry carrying 300 passengers on the Padma River was saved from sinking as one of the passengers called 999 for help. The rescue operation that was carried out last year to save the lives of 13 fishermen who had been stranded at the Bay of Bengal for five days, is another such case.

The emergency helpline can actually make a big difference in a society like ours, as it can not only be used to save lives, but also to combat crimes. Just think about how we can bring the number of child marriages down to zero with only a call from any of us—the ordinary citizens. Therefore, the authorities concerned must give more effort into making the helpline a robust, efficient service that can help the citizens whenever needed.

Naznin Tithi is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.