Non-serious calls keep Dubai '999' line busy

The number of serious calls received by Dubai Police’s operations room rose 4.68 per cent from 431,624 in 2010 to 451,834 in 2011.

Brigadier Omar Al Shamsi, Director of the Operations Room, said serious calls are about fire, crime, road accidents, drowning and critically ill patients.

Police patrols, ambulances, CID cadres and others have to be moved in response to serious calls, he said.

Serious calls related to road accidents rose 47.66 per cent to 215,303 last year.

Crime-related serious calls totaled 84,177 last year or 18.63 per cent of the total calls.

Serious calls for ambulance and medical cases claimed 49,096 or 10.86 per cent of the total number of calls.

The number of calls related to ordinary personal problems totalled 76,369 or 16.9 per cent of the total.

Calls related to other services totalled 26,916 or 5.96 per cent of the total.

Brigadier Al Shamsi said the number of non-serious calls received was almost double those of serious calls.

Such calls did not need to move police patrol cars or ambulances as they were about the personal needs of the callers.

He said non-serious calls included reporting about a bus stuck on the road, lack of parking space, car running in the wrong direction, stray animals or damaged road radars.

Half of these calls were received in the police operations room between 1 pm and 10 pm.

70 police cadres, from non-commissioned officers to graduates of Dubai Police Academy, are running the operations room, Al Shamsi said.

They have attended special training courses to enable them to work under pressure and are fluent in seven languages -- Arabic, English, German, Chinese, Russian, Persian and Urdu.

The operations room of Dubai Police is keen to achieve the target of responding to all urgent calls within 10 seconds. 99.6 per cent of the emergency calls in 2011 were responded to within this time, he added.

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