Emergency? Please hold or call later...

An "overwhelming" number of trivial and hoax phone calls are blocking the emergency 112 lines, according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs.

But it is "still not considered acceptable" for a third of calls to be left unanswered, even though these are automatically forwarded to the Civil Protection Department or Mater Dei Hospital.

The Sunday Times has reported that 33 per cent of emergency calls are not answered by police officers who man the system. The government failed to submit such statistics to the European Commission, even though it was asked to do so.

The police blamed Malta's poor record on blocked lines caused by prank callers or those who called when there was no genuine emergency. They said some people did not allow enough time for their calls to be answered.

In other EU countries, the rate of unanswered phone calls lies between zero and 6.5 per cent and an effort is being made Europe-wide to keep such figures as low as possible.

According to the ministry, the figures for Malta do not imply that 33 of every 100 different callers do not receive any reply because people can hang up and re-dial.

The problem in Malta was that almost two calls were made per minute, so with only three operators and three telephones, the lines were easily jammed.

Asked why so many calls were unanswered, the spokesman said the over-riding factor was the "misuse of the service".

"Such calls include persons wanting to contact other government departments on trivial matters, telephone enquiries, queries about police procedure, toddlers and children playing on mobile phones, or prank calls."

However, sources said that police officers aggravated the problem because they used the line for internal calls.

The ministry did not comment on this when asked. Instead it pointed out that only one in five calls required further action by the police or any government department last year.

Although there are plans to improve the service and curb abuse, the government is not yet willing to bring in more personnel and telephones.

Rather, the government's focus is to "cut down on misuse" through better equipment and software and by raising public awareness.

Police officers who man the 112 emergency lines were under "strict instructions not to entertain non-emergency calls", the ministry said, adding that the government was also considering introducing penalties for those convicted of misusing the service.

Asked why the statistics were never sent to the EC to be included in an analysis report, the ministry said "the system needs certain enhancement to retrieve the new data, which is being demanded".

It denied that Brussels had discussed the issue with ministry personnel, as claimed by sources who spoke to The Sunday Times.

When asked whether the service should be privatised, the ministry spokesman would only say it should not.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister said all help lines should be manned efficiently and that a group of permanent secretaries were working to improve all government lines.

Readers who reacted to the article shared their own experiences of the emergency service.

Paul Ellul said that when someone broke into his neighbour's house it took four minutes and 32 seconds for someone to pick up his 112 call. "Thank goodness it was not a dear one having a heart attack," he added.

Other readers stressed the importance of having more policemen and telephones dedicated to the system and pointed out that this was not the only important line that was not being operated effectively.

"At my place of work, we are taught that we should not let our phone ring more than three times," Anthony Debono wrote.