Taipei City seeks lower ‘1999’ hotline phone rate

The municipal government has maintained 19 toll free phone lines to provide better public services, including protecting of women and children, reporting on road pavement situations, and towed vehicle for people looking for their cars or motorcycles. There are also three phone lines with lower rate for other services, including reporting on suspected fraud cases.

The city government presently receives around 53,500 calls via these service lines with each call lasting for an average of 1.5 minutes.

Starting in July, all of the 22 service lines will be consolidated into a one simplified “1999 hotline” phone number with staff quickly forwarding the information to relevant departments or agencies.

City government officials said the move is intended to provide better services with faster and more efficient response to the people’s needs.

Another advantage is the single set of the centralized four-digit number can be more easily remembered, compared with the many sets the 10-digit numbers starting with 0800.

But Taipei City Council member Wu Shih-yao criticized the city government’s move to force a caller to pay at least NT$10 per call when dialing the “1999 hotline” phone number with a mobile phone.

She said it is unfair for a citizen to pay such a high charge when reporting the inadequate services of the city government, like the malfunctions of traffic signals or potholes on the roads.

Officials of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission at the municipal government said “1999” has become the unified phone number adopted by all municipal and county governments in Taiwan area. All callers using the “1999” are required to pay the cost which will show in the callers’ phone bills.

But the municipal government has been negotiating with Chunghwa Telecom, the largest telecommunications service company in Taiwan, to lower the charges for the calls on grounds of heavy use and for public service, they said.

Before the rate is lowered, they suggested that callers use the fixed line telecom service at home, office, or public phone booths that charge much lower rate than wireless mobile phones.

If Taipei is able to bargain down the phone rates, more people throughout Taiwan will get the benefits because all other municipal and county governments will be certain to follow suit to lower the service charge.