Hoax callers at police helpline warned of stern action

Islamabad : The Islamabad police have been directed to install a system to trace CNIC details as well as location of those callers making hoax phone calls at police help-lines and initiate legal action against them.

These directions were made by Inspector General of Police (IGP) Islamabad Muhammad Aamir Zulfiqar Khan who paid a visit to Safe City Project, Islamabad on Thursday.

IGP was accompanied by DIG (Headquarters) Nasir Mehmood Satti, DIG (Operations) Faisla Ali Raja, SSP (Operations) Waqar-Ud-Din Syed and SP (Safe city) Hassam Bin Iqbal. During his visit, IGP interacted with staff of Safe City Project and inquired about the volume of calls on daily basis. He was briefed that they receive 3000-3500 calls on daily basis. However, genuine calls are not more than 35-40.

Aamir Zulfiqar also checked the efficacy of safe city by making one call about a theft of vehicle. However, he was not satisfied; the way telephone operator attended the caller. The telephone operator was not well versed and trained about empathy, passion and basic ethics.

The IGP advised DIG (Operations) to start a training program by virtue of which telephone operators’ capacity could be improved. Furthermore, he advised DIG (Operations) to install software by virtue of which CNIC details and location of the caller could be determined. In addition, volume of the call could be limited but all out details from the caller could be ascertained so that the rest of the callers could not be waiting in the queue.

In order to stop hoax calls, the IGP directed SSP operations to initiate legal proceedings against the fake caller under section 25 Telegraph Act. Besides that IGP advised DIG (Operations) to make grading according to the nature of the call, i.e. priority should be given to calls related murder, kidnapping for ransom, dacoity/gang rape, terrorism and missing children. He further directed to improve the system, where at the vehicle’ details could be obtained by its registration number.