Police 999 hotline received 825,967 nuisance calls last year

Police urges public to avoid nuisance and non-emergency calls.

Belmont Lay| September 11, 08:48 AM

Out of 1.4 million calls to police 999 hotline last year, 825,967 of them were nuisance calls. That is equivalent to about 2,300 nuisance calls a day.

This, however, is a marked improvement from a peak of more than 1.2 million nuisance calls received in 2004.

When combined, nuisance and non-emergency calls made up more than 76 percent of all calls received last year. The remainder of calls are actual emergencies.

Nuisance callers either keep mum, make obscene or vulgar remarks and hang up, or are those who accidentally dial 999.

Non-emergency callers usually either request directions or the phone numbers of other organisations or government agencies.

Despite the high traffic of non-emergency calls received, the police have managed to keep to their strict set of service standards on 999 calls.

The 999 hotline operators managed to answer nine out of 10 emergency calls within 10 seconds and responding to urgent incidents within 15 minutes of the call for 87 per cent of the time.

The police said that from next year, educational brochures will be rolled out to help generate more awareness on using the emergency hotline.

Nuisance and non-emergency calls are a liability. They hinder the operational efficiency of the police in responding to calls and providing prompt service to those who need urgent response or immediate police assistance, a police spokesman said.

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