MANGALDAI, June 17 - Officials of the GVK-EMRI, authorised operating agency for free Emergency Response Service (ERS) in the State, i.e. 108-Mrityunjoy, 102-National Ambulance Service and �Adarani� have expressed concern over the huge number of hoax and nuisance calls which has turned out to be a major barrier in rendering their services.
Kaushik S Saikia, Regional Manager of GVK-EMRI, Guwahati region in the presence of a few higher officials, including Bhaskarjyoti Das, Programme Manager Dhurbajyoti Prasad, Marketing and Communication Manager Swarup Kalita, EME, Darrang addressed a press conference at the auditorium of Youth Club here in this regard on Friday afternoon.
They pointed out that their call centres have the facility of receiving 90 free calls at a time through three separate special lease telephone lines and an average of around 10,000 received calls have been recorded daily in the State. However, 60 per cent of such calls are hoax or nuisance calls.
Significantly, the number of such hoax calls increase during the month of July, when most of the school students of the State enjoy summer vacation.
�Through analysis of the call records, it was found that most of the hoax and nuisance callers during July and August last year were children,� said RM, Kausik S Saikia. He appealed to the parents and guardians of the students to control their wards from dialling the free number of the ERS.
�Everyone should abstain ourselves from making any unnecessary calls as such calls may block other important calls and in many such cases due to the failure of emergency service at the right time, any poor patient may suffer or even die,� he added.
On the other hand, RM, Saikia highlighted the forceful shifting of the vehicle by locals, lack of necessary awareness among rural masses and dilapidated rural road condition as other factors which have become barriers in the services. Meanwhile, giving a brief account of their services, the officials said that since their inception in 2008, they covered a total of 2,87,000 beneficiaries across the State, out which 39 per cent cases are related to pregnancy.
In Darrang district, the organisation has presently been rendering their services through 12 Mrityunjoy ambulances, Adarani vans numbering eight and National Ambulance Services vehicles numbering 14 .
The district, since inception of the service in February 2009 till the last month has recorded 1,95,406 emergency calls, 10,695 calls related to road traffic accidents, pregnancy-related calls numbering 54,694 and 2,314 calls related to suicide cases, among others. The average time of attending a patient after receipt of the call has been recorded as 29 minutes, the officials of the service providing agency further mentioned before the media.
