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Monday, February 4, 2013

Van crunch hits emergency service

City police are facing a shortage of vehicles for the “Dial 100” emergency service.

City police are facing a shortage of vehicles for the “Dial 100” emergency service.

At present, there are 22 police patrol vehicles connected with geographic information system (GIS) and geographic positioning system (GPS) for prompt response to people seeking help on the police control room number 100.

But police personnel engaged with the helpline told The Telegraph that the present vehicles were not adequate and they require at least 50 vans to cater to the increasing number of calls.

“When we started the service last year, we were provided with 26 vehicles but at least four remain off the streets owing to technical problems or repairs. We require at least two to three vehicles for each police station as the population is growing fast and criminal activities have also increased. The shortage of vehicles sometimes leads to the increase in our response time,” a source in the control room said.

There are 21 police stations, including the all-woman police station and nine police outposts in the city and on the outskirts.

According to sources, at least 50 vehicles are required to provide better police services and further reduce the response time to distress calls.

“Dial 100” is an integrated 24-hour police helpline where police vans are connected with GIS/GPS technology through a very high frequency communication system to assist people in distress. Assam police and a US-based company Inter Act are jointly implementing the project.

An officer and armed constables man each patrolling van.

Since it was launched in March last year, the control room has received a total of 2,97,560 calls, of which 1,953 calls were related to various incidents which needed police help.

The control room has received an average of 178 calls monthly and police assistance provided in an average time of 11.59 minutes.

The service has averted serious crimes like rape, attempted murder, robbery, theft, among others but has been unable to reduce the response time owing to inadequate number of vehicles.

“We receive frequent calls from areas under Dispur, Chandmari and Basistha police stations and at least three vans should be deployed there. But there is only one van and in the case of multiple calls under the same police station, we have to rush a different vehicle. In the process, we lose valuable time and our response time increases. We are trying to make sure we can provide the best service with 22 vehicles,” the source said.

Altogether 45 policemen, trained in IT skills, are catering to the calls and work in four shifts.

The control room has 10 call dispatch facilities.

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