57% Of ‘999’ Calls This Year Are Either Non-Related Calls Or People Asking SPF To Pay Their Electricity Bill

Since we were young, we’ve been taught: If you need help, just call ‘999’.

And help will be on the way like your own personal VR Man.

And if you’re a mischevious kid, you’d definitely have crowded around the public phone with a few friends and dial the number just for fun.

You’d keep quiet and try not to burst out laughing or you giggle and hang up.

While you’ve never thought much of it, did you know that a majority of the calls the emergency hotline, 999, gets aren’t actually emergencies?

Weirdest ‘999’ Calls Ever

On 13 Oct, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Home Affairs Amrin Amin uploaded a post on his Facebook page.

In it, he described the weirdest calls the SCDF emergency hotline has ever gotten.

Now, the SPF has revealed some of the ‘999’ calls that aren’t just strange but downright weird.

Like who the heck thinks of that kind of weird.

According to a recent report ran by Channel Newsasia, some of the calls include:

• Brother, can help me pay for my electricity bill? Very expensive leh
• Prank calls on fire, thefts or robberies
• Sorry ah, what’s the CPF hotline? I am old lah, uncle already
• Hello sir, what’s the time now? I forgot to bring my watch.
• I need a doctor.
• Can help me book a taxi? Here no taxi leh.
• Flies around a rubbish bin

Yup. Most Singaporeans would’ve done #2 before.

But #1 is asking for too much.

Here, you can watch this video to find out more:

In 2017, 58% of more than 1 million ‘999’ calls were nuisance calls or non-police-related calls. That’s about 687,495 nuisance or non-police-related calls.

Similarly, from Jan to Jun 2018, 57% of 683,352 calls were not emergency calls.

You Can Actually Get Jailed For Anyhowly Calling The Police

Sorry, my boss’s been forcing me to use the word anyhowly. He’s hoping it’ll catch on like the “durian generation”.

But yes, calling the police hotline without a valid reason (i.e. anyhowly) can land you into hot soup.

You can be given a warning, visited by a police officer or even persecuted.

A 61-year-old cleaner who made nuisance calls to the police hotline after drinking was recently sentenced to 3 years jail time.

Every Time You Made An Unimportant ‘999’ Call, It Could Mean Someone Else Could Die

This is common sense. Every time you make a ‘999’ call, an operator will have to take precious time to attend to you.

Depending on how unreasonable you are, it might take a longer or shorter period of time to deal with you.

Plus, they cannot brush you off in case it turns out to be a real emergency.

So if another person were to call, and he really needed help at that moment, he might be put on hold because there are no available operators at hand.

And he might not have gotten the help he could’ve gotten if you weren’t such an arsehole.

So remember, folks, not everything is under the men in blue.

For CPF matters or not being able to call for a taxi, call CPF or the taxi company instead next time.