An official from the City Tourism Operations Office (CTOO) admitted that they have been experiencing difficulties accommodating all the queries of stranded individuals.
CTOO chief Generose Tecson in an interview with Davao City Disaster Radio on Saturday urged these individuals to be “patient” as they are trying to answer the massive number of emails and text messages from those wishing assistance.
“That is why our systems have the tendency that it will be down since there are loads of messages a day,” she said.
Tecson said that every day, the hotline numbers receive more than 2,000 messages. She said there are instances that a person sends 20 to 30 messages in one day. “Because of this, I asked my personnel to just encode and encode and collect their information for them to be listed,” she said.
Tecson also said that they receive 4,000 emails every day. They need to encode the messages quickly because the email has a maximum capacity of 5,000 messages.
Because of the flood of messages, she said their line would probably clog up, the reason why they can’t answer immediately. But she assured the public that they are trying their best to respond.
She said their office received several complaints from people who said that their queries were left unanswered.
She also reminded the public to refrain from calling the provided contact numbers since it will also make the system down. “If you do these, some text messages will not be able to reach us because of the many messages sent, plus the calls. You are taking out anyone’s chances to reach us to ask for assistance,” she said.
For those stranded passengers who want to go home, the contact details of the CTOO are provided in their official social media account. But she has urged the public to refrain from flooding Facebook with multiple messages as it will slow down their work.
