Formerly housed in squat windowless buildings in the Green Zone, Iraq's National Tips Hot Line now sits in a modern, crisply painted two-story structure alongside the looming headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior in Central Baghdad.
Under the dusty glare of a noonday sun this weekend, Iraqi officials unveiled the new home with the pomp of a political convention, complete with cake and an Iraqi police band that labored its way through the national anthem. The interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, trumpeted the hot line's successes.
Terrorists had been routed, kidnappings stymied and unexploded bombs discovered, he said — all because of tips from hundreds of thousands of callers from all over Iraq.
Yet despite the new building, and the large, airy room where the calls are now answered (most by former Iraqi policemen) many of the nettlesome problems that have long plagued the hot line persist. Jointly run by the Iraqi government and the American military, the system remains unable to handle or filter all that it receives. The number of lines still outstrips the number of people who answer them.
Nuisance callers — some threatening, some female and flirty, others lonesome insomniacs — still account for four out of five calls that come in, according to Shane McCann, a contractor from Northern Ireland hired to train the hot line's staff members. Mr. McCann said the abusive callers would hurl invectives, or say things like: "Your mother's a whore. We know who you are." And, quite often, the operators would yell right back.
"We're trying to get them away from getting into arguments with nuisance callers," Mr. McCann said. "They get into slagging matches."
Estimates on the number of answered calls range from 1,000 to 3,000 a week, not including calls made to smaller, local call centers. But because there is no answering service or hold system to digitally answer the calls, many ring on and on, unanswered, until the caller gives up.
"So many of the problems are still here, just transferred to the new building," Mr. McCann said. "The difference is here we will have to capacity to change that."
Mr. Bolani has pledged to double the number of answerers, to 120 from 59 in the coming months, and he said more phone lines would be added.
Phil Scott, another contractor from Northern Ireland, said the Iraqi government had no choice but to ensure that the hot line worked. While the violence in Iraq has subsided, Mr. Scott said, criminality has not. "This is people's lifeline," he said.
—Cara Buckley |
