Police today appealed to the public to use the 999 hotline service for emergencies only.
Police Regional Command & Control Centres received more than 1.1 million calls in the first half of the year, of which about 60% - or about 6.68 million calls - were genuine. The rest were either misdialled or nuisance calls.
Hotline misuse unnecessarily engages control centre operators and delays the handling of genuine emergencies, endangering the lives of people in genuine need of assistance.
People can call police stations which can promptly handle most crime reports and non-emergency requests. A list of police station contact numbers can be found on the Police website.