Ajman: An elderly Emirati man called the police operations room hotline 999 daily, asking cops to listen to his new poem, officials said on Monday.
“I ask people not to misuse the emergency number,” said Lieutenant Colonel Hisham Abdullah Bu Shab, Director of Police Operation Room at Ajman Police. “We receive a number of calls on the emergency number for general inquiries, wrong numbers or bogus emergencies which placed an extra burden on emergency resources,” he said.
He said people have to understand that the number 999 is for those who are in an emergency such as an accident, heart attack, or a fire. People should not call 999 for non-emergency issues.
The Operations Room of the Ajman Police received 177,000 calls during the first quarter of this year, about 69,000 calls per month and only 16,000 calls were emergency calls.
The elderly man, meanwhile insisted on reading his full poem and took a long time, the official said.
The man stopped calling after a while but his calls were handled patiently. During Ramadan, many people called to ask about iftar time, the officer said.
The police on Monday inaugurated a new operation room equipped with smart technology aimed at faster response time to security and traffic accidents.
Lieutenant Colonel Bu Shab said the new room is currently the latest of six operation rooms set up by the Ministry of Interior in the country.
It is equipped with Smart map which helps them send report electronically to the nearest patrol near the site of an incident, thus speeding up the response time for rescue operations. The smart map can be used to send communications to patrols within 200 metres of the site of incident.
Lt. Col. Bu Shab said there are 20 patrols and 10 traffic sergeants who are working round the clock in each shift.
Major Saeed Ali Al Mudhani, Deputy Director of Operations Department at Ajman Police, said the command has allocated 999 to report emergency calls and 901 for reporting non-emergency incidents. A team of 30 operations room personnel work in shifts and they take calls in Arabic, English, Urdu and Mandarin.
A three-dimensional map, which covers the emirate, is also on display in the control room and news channels can also be viewed on the screens.
