VIJAYAWADA: Even as the police department has been responding promptly to distress calls made by women and girls through the Disha App and its affiliated control room set up in all the 18 police units across the State, the staff working in these control rooms round-the-clock and the police on ground are reportedly irked with the calls that are neither emergency in nature nor serious enough to send an SoS.
The Disha SoS mobile application is a part of the slew of measures taken by the State government to address crimes against women effectively which allows women users to alert the police by clicking the “panic button” or the SoS feature during an emergency.
According to sources in the department, the Disha control room that mainly aims to provide emergency support for women in distress are flooded either with unactionable calls or users (especially women) seeking help in family disputes or other issues such as marital disputes.
As per statistics obtained from the department, as of August 15, the Disha control rooms in all 18 police units have received a total of 3,10,782 SoS calls. Of these, only 2,988 were actionable. Majority of them were related to domestic violence, followed by complaints of stalking and sexual harassment. Police have so far registered 436 FIRs.
“Most users are using the app to report issues like family disputes, harassment by relatives and other cases. For such issues, they can approach the the local police station. This is demotivating our staff and the purpose of the SoS app is also deceived,” a woman police officer said.