CDRRMO calls out 911 nuisance callers

The Davao City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) on Monday issued a warning against people who dial the Central 911 emergency hotline as a prank or for other malicious reasons.

In 2022, a total of 299,006 calls to the 911 hotline were registered as nuisance calls while only 48,316 were verified emergency calls. This brings the average nuisance calls the hotline receives per month at around 25,000, while legitimate emergency calls at only around 4,000.

CDRRMO head Alfredo Baloran, in an interview with the media on Monday, said a large number of nuisance calls are not particularly maliciously intended but are usually made by people, some of whom are children, who are curious about how the hotline works.

“Ang uban dinha ma-record siya as prank calls kanang naga-testing lang gani og tawag, just to prepare themselves ba. Dili gyud nato na siya maiwasan (Some of those are recorded as prank calls are people who are just practicing how to dial, just to prepare themselves. We really cannot avoid that),” Baloran said.

“Naa pu’y naga-call ang uban mga bata, dili pud nato gina-discount kay kung ang bata lang ang naa sa balay, dapat ang bata kabalo pud siya mu-dial og 911 (There are other callers who are children, we really cannot discount them because if a child is alone in their home, they have to learn how to dial 911),” he added.

Although receiving and answering inquiries is not part of the mandate and function of the Central 911, the hotline received 10,493 calls categorized as “inquiry calls” in 2022.

Baloran said Central 911 personnel are given the directive to exercise patience and educate the callers to the hotline’s function.

“Mao na atong advise sa mga call-takers nato: receive the call and educate the caller,” he added.

Baloran admitted that although few and far in between, there are still those who call only to play a joke on the personnel manning the hotline. Although the law stipulates legal action against prank callers, Baloran said that as of now, no legal action has been taken on anyone since pursuing prank callers requires valuable time and resources that the office would rather spend on responding to actual emergencies.

The CDRRMO chief said the national SIM registration program will hopefully put a stop to prank calls to the Central 911. In the meantime, he urged citizens to respect the gravity of the hotline’s function and to only dial 911 in actual emergencies.

“The 911 hotline of Davao City is an emergency number so dili nato na siya bugal-bugalan, dili nato na dula-dulaan. And kana siya is for emergency purposes lang gyud (The 911 hotline of Davao City is an emergency number so we can’t treat it as a joke, we cannot play with it. This is for emergency purposes only,” Baloran said. CIO