Police overwhelmed with calls, working on improving call center capacity

Commissioner of Police Mohamed Hameed, on Thursday, announced that Maldives Police Service was working on improving the capacity and efficiency of its call center set up to handle requests during the lockdown on Male’ City.

“We are working to improve capacity and efficiency of our Call Center established to handle all sorts of requests by business and members of public during this #lockdown,” said Hameed.

He said the police have now introduced a web link to facilitate requests, and advised people to submit requests to https://police.gov.mv/permit/.

The police call center was launched on Wednesday night, and according to statistics disclosed by Hameed, it has since received 2,682 calls.

• Total calls: 2,682
• Answered calls: 1,464
• Abandoned calls: 1,218
• Average waiting time: 2:58 minutes

The statistics show the call center answered 54 percent of calls.

People who require venturing out for access to essential services during the lockdown are required to call 3034444 and register, or use the web link https://police.gov.mv/permit/ and register online.

Those who have been granted permission by police are required to keep their national identity cards on them.

Male’ identified its first COVID-19 case on Wednesday morning. The patient has no recent travel history overseas nor had any contact with any other positive cases. Two others who had contact with the patient have also tested positive, including a toddler – a child of the first patient.

Male’ and its suburbs – Hulhumale’ and Vilimale’ – are currently under a 24-hour lockdown as authorities work on identifying the source of the outbreak and isolate all those who may have been exposed to the disease.

The emergency alert status in Male’ has been upped to ‘red alert’ with the emergence of the cases – the first outbreak of COVID-19 in a residential island.