The Daily Star (DS) : How many calls do you have to attend everyday? What is the most popular kind of service sought?

Tabarak Ullah: The 999-service started its journey on December 12, 2017. Till March 15 this year, we’ve received around 2.73 crore calls.

Among them, we managed to provide service to some 78.74 lakh calls. Of them, 78 percent were for police assistance, 11 percent for fire service, and 11 percent for ambulance service.

Although we provide emergency assistance for police, fire and ambulance services, a huge number of callers call on the toll-free number for other issues too, for instance over lost cell phones, information on how to file a general diary with police, request to arrest criminals or submit charge sheets.

DS: Where are most of these calls from? Is there any specific time of the year when the number of calls increase noticeably?

Tabarak Ullah: Urban callers out number rural callers by far, and the majority of them is from Dhaka metropolitan area. Of them, 78 percent are male callers while 22 percent are female.

The number of calls increase during national programmes or natural disasters, and religious occasions like Eid or Ramadan. Queries during these times are mostly related to information on the natural disasters or issues such as moon sighting (for Eid).

During these times, we sometimes receive up to 60 to 70 thousand calls a day.

DS: Is there any plan to increase capacity?

Tabrak Ullah: Initially, the only way to call the toll free 999 number was from T&T and cell phones. But now, citizens have the scope to communicate with us through our Facebook page, messenger, Twitter and WhatsApp.

We have around 100 stations to receive calls from T&T and cell phones and one station for the digital platforms. We have the capacity to receive around 120 calls per minute now.

Besides, two new apps of the 999-service will be launched soon. The police chief will inaugurate the apps soon. One is SOS, where a person can communicate with us just by pressing a single button. The other one is for ambulance service. Currently, we have 10,000 ambulances registered with our system.

DS: What is your response time now?

Tabrak Ullah: We are trying to minimise our response time. Currently, it takes around 15 to 20 minutes to respond to a call on average. This is mainly because police, fire service or ambulance services often face difficulty reaching destinations due to busy roads, narrow roads, or traffic jam.