Delhi Police ask DoT to Scrap 121 Customer Care Number

Photo of author

By DT News Desk

Rate this post

The Delhi Police has written to theย Department of Telecommunications (DoT)ย to discontinue customer helpline number 121 as it was โ€œcreating confusionโ€ and leading to a โ€œspike in the number of blank callsโ€ received by the DoTโ€™s emergency number 112.

The DoT of the central government had allotted 112 for the National Emergency Response System project. The number is touted to be Indiaโ€™s equivalent of the USโ€™s all-in-one emergency services number 911.

The Delhi Police is at present conducting its trial run. A senior police officer Monday said 112 number received over 38,000 calls in the last 24 hours and out of these, only 734 calls were in the actionable category, i.e. when a PCR van is sent out to mitigate the trouble.

The officer said a letter was written to the Department of Telecommunications to โ€œremove 121โ€ as the helpline of service providers to reduce the number of blank calls on the number.

The letter stated that while dialling the customer care number 121, most of the callers accidentally dialled 112.

In order to ensure effective implementation of emergency response number 112, it is requested to remove 121 as the helpline of all service providers and other glitches, it said.

In December last, the trial run for 112 had to be halted since the number of blank calls received on it as well as on 100 reached a staggering 72,000 calls per day.

After a six-month gap, the police began the trial run and started the process of tying up with different telecom service providers for operating 112, said the officer.

ALSO READย  Get Medical Tests at Home, Online Portal 3Hcare Offering

During this process, it was found that several calls made to 112 had been done by mistake.

โ€œMany callers claimed that they were dialling 121, which is a customer helpline number, and ended up dialling 112 by mistake. We have written to the DoT and a reply is awaited,โ€ the officer added.

Source: PTI
Follow us on Google News
WhatsApp Group Join Now
Telegram Group Join Now
Instagram Group Join Now

Leave a Comment