Personnel of the National Ambulance Service are complaining bitterly about incessant telephones calls for their services which have turned out to be a hoax.
According to them, they are being inundated with prank calls since the launch of the 307 ambulances for every constituency in the country last Tuesday.
During the inauguration of the ambulances, President Akufo-Addo cautioned Ghanaians against abuse of the emergency contact number — 112 — which was supposed to give a great boost in the healthcare system.
He had said some people were misusing the emergency service numbers, a development, he said, could in itself put human lives at risk.
“I will appeal that this improvement in the provision of emergency services be not abused. We are told that 90% of calls made to the providers of emergency services are usually prank calls. This is not right as it only endangers the life of Ghanaians in need,” he said.
Despite the President’s admonition, the Head of the Call Centre of the NAS, Matilda Nartey, expressed worry on Joy FM yesterday that, surprisingly, the prank calls had increased since the inauguration of the ambulances.
“We have received more than 200 prank calls within an hour; for now, we don’t have any procedure to block them or report them to the police,” she said, adding “so what we have done this morning is to write down all the names and numbers that have called, the number of times, and the time that they called.”
“For almost 30 minutes, there is one caller who just calls; if we pick the call, the person does not talk. If we hang up, then the person calls back again.”