GNFS Acquire Tools To Monitor Prank Callers

By the end of the year, the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), in collaboration with National Security, will safeguard telephone console devices to crack down on those making prank calls and bring charges against them.

In order to track such calls, the Service would coordinate with telecommunications providers.

Assistant Chief Fire Officer (ACFO) Timothy Osafo-Affum, the GNFS’s head of public relations, revealed this to the Ghanaian Times in Accra.

He claimed the devices will enable the Service to choose and save more sincere calls during emergencies.

Moreover, he claimed that in contrast to 35,307 in 2021, the Service registered 637,660 hoaxes in 2018.

Over 50,000 of these hoax calls were logged each month, according to ACFO Osafo-Affum, or 1,714 each day.

The database of registered Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards, according to ACFO Osafo-Affum, would help identify and prosecute those responsible for hoax calls in order to serve as a deterrent to others.

He claimed that the Service had increased public awareness of the detrimental consequences prank calls have on the GNFS’s regular operations.

According to him, “the Service occasionally receives such calls and firefighters are deployed into the communities to put out such supposed fires, but they turn out to be hoaxes, meaning the Service has wasted resources and even put the firefighters in danger, to the detriment of people who need our services the most.”

According to the PR representative, some callers would make amusing declarations like “My beard is burning,” as well as derogatory remarks to female firefighters who would receive the calls.

The head of Public Relations claimed that when school kids were on holiday, the number of prank calls considerably rose.

In his appeal for the public to stop engaging in such harmful behavior, ACFO Osafo-Affum emphasized that offenders will face legal action as a deterrent to future offenders.

In light of this, he asked parents to keep an eye on their kids at home and to teach them not to abuse the emergency lines.

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