8264 Spam Calls Received At NACTA Helpline, 75 SIMs Blocked

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Augst,2016) : National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) received 8305 phone calls at its especially introduced helpline, of which 8264 were spam calls during the first three weeks of last month. This was informed in a monthly meeting, chaired by National Coordinator NACTA, Ihsan Ghani here on Thursday, to monitor progress on various on-going NACTA initiatives.

NACTA's Members, Director Generals (DGs) 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 NACTA round-the-clock for seven days a week. The figures and data of calls of first 20 days of July showed that only 41 calls were legitimate and were actionable from amongst the total 8305 calls made during the period.

Whereas, 8264 calls were either irrelevant or based on false information. NACTA's high-ups were informed that cellphone SIMs of those 75 frequent spam callers who called more than 50 fake calls were got blocked through Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to discourage such hoax callers.

It is worth mentioning that by default caller tune conveys them the warning of legal consequences for misuse of such an important helpline.

The meeting was also informed that despite the fact that NACTA is facing shortage of resources including officers and trained staff, it operates a dedicated helpline to respond any possible threat of country-wide terrorism through relevant Law Enforcing Agencies (LEAs).

NACTA is endeavoring to save lives of many innocent people but some irresponsible persons create hindrances by making hundreds and thousands of hoax/spam calls on Pakistan's one and only anti- terrorism Helpline number i.e.

1717. Ihsan Ghani has taken serious notice of the situation and reiterated NACTA's ambition to minimize pain of this traumatized nation which has been victims of long and unwanted war of terrorism.

He decided to make appeal to people not to get 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 and get embarrassed by their family and friends for their highly condemnable act of making hoax calls on such an important lifesaving Helpline of NACTA.