Partido Reporma chairman and standard-bearer Panfilo “Ping” Lacson has advised local government units to deal seriously with prank and drop callers that pester their respective 911 emergency hotlines.
The former Philippine National Police chief underscored the importance of emergency hotlines in saving lives and property, saying that prank callers should be kept off such telecommunication lines.
Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong brought up the problem the city government has been dealing with in the operations of their 911 emergency hotline.
Launched only last October, the Baguio City emergency hotline has been kept busy not by emergency calls but by bogus pleas for urgent police or medical assistance.
Magalong and his chief of staff Philip Puzon had talks with Lacson who recently visited Baguio City for a speaking engagement and to check the recently launched Smart City Command Center of its local government.
Puzon reported that out of the 16,000-plus calls they received over the 911 hotline thus far, around 7,000 turned out to be prank calls and more than 5,000 were drop calls; only 0.6 percent of legitimate calls have been recorded, which seriously bothered the city government.
Lacson took note of this problem and told Magalong and Puzon that since their system can trace and identify the people behind these prank calls, city government personnel can easily locate and personally admonish them over such misconduct.
“At least call the attention na alam niyang his number is being detected tapos ma-preempt siya, next time, alam niyang ma-de-detect. And then, word-of-mouth, ‘hoy! Huwag kayong mag-prank calls... Ako, pinasyalan na ako dito, ‘di ba?’(At least call the attention and let him know that his number is being detected to preempt him . Next time, he will be aware that he can be detected, and then by word-of-mouth, he can tell the others: ‘Hey, don’t make prank calls... I have been reprimanded.’),” Lacson said.
Puzon accepted this advice even as members of the Baguio City Council are also considering passing either a resolution or an ordinance to penalize people who are misusing the 911 hotline, which could impede legitimate public calls for emergencies.
Lacson believes that educating the public through word-of-mouth marketing can also be an effective tool to prevent people from making prank calls and jamming the emergency hotline. “At the proper time, they will be educated and the number of our prank calls will drop,” he said.
Magalong showed Lacson a glimpse of their command and communications center, which, according to the senator, has a lot of potential to help Baguio City achieve a ‘zero crime rate’ situation owing to the benefits of modern technology.