As children, one of our favorite games is to pull a prank on other people. A prank is an action meant to be a joke. However, it appears to be that joke-time got a bit too far as the government calls attention for emergency line prank calls.
A quick recap: the 911 is the emergency hotline currently active in the Philippines today. From its humble beginnings as Patrol 11, comes the E911 program back in the year 2016.
By dialing 911, you are asking for police assistance, reporting nearby fire, medical emergencies, search and rescue, and even those concerning dangerous materials (explosive) or chemicals (nuclear). Having established that, you can now get a glimpse of how serious a matter the emergency hotline is.
Now, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) reported that the hotline acquired over 2.54 million prank calls in the past year. Out of the 18.4 million calls, 37,440 were authentic emergency pleas (16,763 were non-emergencies).
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This is to say that more than half of the 9.716 million calls were either incomplete, abandoned, disconnected, or dropped. That rounds up the number of fake calls to 2.54 million.
Given this statistics, Eduardo Año, the Interior Secretary, reminds people to be more disciplined when it comes to using 911. He further presses that these kinds of joke could jeopardize those who are actually calling in a state of emergency because their calls will not be able to come through.
DILG says that real emergency calls are distributed to the closest Primary Service Responders as well as Major Support Service Responders. Once this is forwarded, they then act promptly to address the situation along with National Call Center’s coordination.
A prank allows us to have a good time, to feel that there is another form of entertainment other than technology. Still, we have to be mindful about the limits of our jokes, especially when it concerns the life and death of millions of people. It isn’t funny anymore when we put someone’s life in danger because of a prank call.