MELBOURNE: ‘000’ Emergency operators of Queensland’s have asked the local people to use common sense when dialing the emergency number.
The police emergency service complained of taking 95% of calls for a non emergency purpose from people asking how to roast a chicken, order a taxi or to inform a girlfriend on a late arrival of her beau.
Police of the Australian state said over 60 per cent of triple-zero calls were made from mobile phones, and they blamed many of the false emergencies on people running out of credit on their mobiles because it was a free call, Courier Mail report said.
"A man whose mobile phone was out of credit and was late to meet his girlfriend rang triple-zero asking someone to call his girlfriend for him," operations support command Superintendent Brian Codd said adding "People are aware this is a free number they can call even when they don’t have any credit".
He said, "Others know we have a call-tracing capacity and ring to ask us their mobile phone number
"We’ve had calls for such things as someone upset because a taxi driver wouldn’t wind up his window and people seeking advice on how long to roast a chicken," he said.
He said people should dial the emergency number only for life-threatening, time-critical emergencies. With as many as 5000 triple-zero calls per week and as many as 95 per cent of these calls for non-emergency reasons, police communications said they unnecessarily test the capacity to respond to genuine emergencies