ISLAMABAD: National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) received 8,305 phone calls at its especially introduced helpline, of which 8264 were spam calls.
This was informed in a monthly meeting – chaired by NACTA National Coordinator Ihsan Ghani on Thursday – to monitor progress on various on-going initiatives. NACTA’s members, director generals and directors attended the meeting.
The participants were apprised on the performance and hurdles, being faced by 1717 Helpline – which is operated and managed by the authority round-the-clock for seven days a week.
The figures of the first 20 days of July showed that only 41 calls were legitimate and were actionable from the total 8,305 calls made during the period – 8,264 calls were either irrelevant or based on false information.
NACTA’s high-ups were informed that SIMs of the 75 frequent spam callers – who called more than 50 times – were blocked through Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to discourage hoax callers. It is worth mentioning that the default caller tune warns of legal consequences for misusing the important helpline.
The meeting was also informed that despite the fact that NACTA was facing shortage of resources, it operates a dedicated helpline to respond any possible threat of country-wide terrorism through the relevant Law Enforcing Agencies (LEAs).
NACTA is endeavouring to save lives of many innocent people but some irresponsible persons create hindrances by making hundreds and thousands of spam calls on Pakistan’s one and only anti-terrorism Helpline number (1717).
Ghani took serious notice of the situation and reiterated NACTA’s ambition to minimise pain of the already traumatised nation – which has been victims of long and unwanted war of terrorism.
He requested the people to avoid getting involved in such practices which not only wastes precious resources of the government but it may end up in irreparable loss of lives of many innocent people – who may include members of their own family or friends. It was decided to make public the names and numbers of such irresponsible persons – in order to make them accountable to civil society.
