Bangladesh National Emergency Helpline 999: After realising her five-year-old child was raped by her neighbour in Bagerhat's Brahmankathi area, a mother called the National Emergency Helpline-999 at March 3 noon.
Despite the vigilance of law enforcers, various criminal activities such as extortions, spreading counterfeit currency and incidents of forcing traders to take cattle to a particular market continue to occur in the lead-up to Eid-ul-Azha.
The speed at which the National Emergency Helpline (999) responds to distress calls is much slower than that of developed countries due to an outdated operating system and manpower shortage.
To prevent suicides, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has recently started working with Facebook and TikTok to get information about social-media users who are vulnerable to self-harming tendencies.
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.