BÌNH DƯƠNG — An investigation will be conducted into nuisance calls to hotlines 115 and 1022.

Lại Xuân Thành, director of the Bình Dương Department of Information and Communications, said there had been a sharp spike in harassing calls to these numbers.

Bình Dương’s 1022 hotline opened on November 24 last year. The hotline works all day to receive comments from residents and enterprises on administrative procedures and other urgent issues.

The system connects to the emergency number 115 if callers require urgent aid.

The system had received hundreds of reports from residents and helped dispatch emergency aid, as well as in epidemic prevention and control. It received praise from local residents, said Thành.

However, recently, a number of callers had clogged to system with nuisance calls, meaning those in true need were unable to get through.

The department’s statistics showed that so far there had been nearly 300 nuisance calls to the hotline. Many were reporting false information.

Thành asked the department’s inspectors to work with provincial police and telecommunications companies to find and stop those harassing the system.

Violators will be punished based on the law.

Inspectors from the Ministry of Information and Communications said that nuisance calls or harassment to the telephone numbers, or reporting false information, would face fines of VNĐ50-70 million (US$2,100-3,000). — VNS