The response to the panic button, which comes fitted with vehicle location tracking devices, is woefully late and often beats the purpose of raising the alarm, a section of app cab operators, bus and minibus owners have told the state government.
“... if a driver or a passenger pushes the panic button, there is no instant response from the authorities.... The purpose of installing a panic button is not being fulfilled...,” the Joint Forum of Transport Operators has written to the state government. “We are spending money to install vehicle location tracking devices (VLTDs). But after installing, the emergency response isn’t working.”
A vehicle tracking system allows tracking and controlling of vehicles on a computer or a smartphone round-the-clock with the help of GPS. The gadget makes it possible to have real-time and historical data on the speed of the vehicles, the routes they follow and their idling times on maps, senior transport department officials said.
The Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), under the ministry of electronics and information technology, has developed the software to monitor vehicles fitted with tracking devices.
In January, chief minister Mamata Banerjee inaugurated a control and command centre, which has been set up in central Calcutta to monitor vehicles and receive emergency calls through panic buttons.
“There is no immediate response from the police when a passenger presses the panic button. We have tried this on several occasions and at different locations but it did not work,” said Indranil Banerjee, secretary of the Online Cab Operators Guild. “There is some technical glitch.”
Several bus operators said the police response, in some cases, has come after over an hour of pressing the button. The alarm is supposed to trigger immediate response from the police, they said.
“We are doing our bit by installing the devices. But if the button doesn’t work, a passenger would blame the bus operator and that is unfair,” said Tito Saha of City Suburban Bus Service.
Saha and Banerjee met transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty last week, urging the government to take immediate steps.
Chakraborty said the state government has taken up the issue with the Union ministry of electronics and information technology and informed C-DAC to attend to the glitch at the earliest.
“The government is very serious about the safety of passengers. Almost 85 per cent of commercial vehicles have fitted the location tracking devices with panic buttons. We have asked the C-DAC to address the issue,” Chakraborty said.