An article in LA Prensa caught my attention because it shows the challenges that face this small country when it comes to making beneficial changes for the public. In the first 4 days of implementing the 911 emergency call number they received over 30,000 calls of which they believe only 300 were actual emergencies. The other 29,700 were prank calls which take up all of the 14 lines making it impossible for actual emergency callers to get through. Why would something like this take place? According to the article in La Prensa, it is because lack of education and lack of penalties for making prank calls. The delinquents behind the prank calls need education in the fact that their actions can cause people to die and that the penalty for making false calls will be very serious. The challenges the country faces in penalizing young people is that laws have no teeth with them. This is why sophisticated criminal operators use underage teens to perform the crimes as they are rarely held for criminal action, even if it involves robbery or battery.
The new 911 Emergency Management System received upward of 30,000 calls, less than 1 percent of them valid, during the first four days of the service’s launching.
System Director Marta Sandoya said the situation is very serious, since the call center can only serve up to 14 calls simultaneously.
“While a delinquent is monopolizing the time of one of our operators, a person who really needs help may be on call waiting,” she said, explaining the system’s intention is to dispatch emergency aid within 15 minutes of receiving a call.
That time goal may be not be possible now, with the number of false alarms forcing operators to attempt to verify the caller’s identity and location before sending help.
Government Innovation Minister Gaspar Tarté said the issue represents a cultural problem. “The Panamanian people need to act more intelligently and seriously than other countries that also report these irregularities,” he said. “We need to understand that the misuse of this service can result in someone’s death.”
Sandoya added that his office was working on drafting a law that would impose “harsh” punishment on those who made prank calls, and hoped lawmakers would regard it as a crime equal to that of threatening a person’s life.
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