Almost half of emergency calls are fake

Nearly a million calls to 111 last year were prank calls and other time-wasters. Photo / Alan Gibson

Almost a million 111 calls made last year were from people bumping their phone, children playing with the phone or prank calls, Herald inquiries have found.

Of the 2.02 million emergency calls, 937,192 - 46 per cent - were false.

"All 111 calls are connected to a Telecom call centre, where a recorded message says "You have dialled 111 emergency, your call is being connected".

A call-taker then connects the person to police, fire or ambulance service."

The calls are all recorded and monitored, a Telecom spokeswoman said.

"We do know the non-genuine ones are children playing, people phoning from their pockets or handbags (i.e. background noise), or prank calls," the spokeswoman said.

The 111 calls used to be answered by a customer service representative but a recorded message system implemented in June 2008 has managed to reduce the number of false calls put through by about 20 per cent - saving unnecessary time spent on the phone.

False calls had made up about 65 per cent of the total emergency calls before the introduction of the recorded message system.

For callers who had misdialled or rung the number by accident, "the message was to reiterate that they have called 111 and prompt them to hang up straight away", the spokeswoman said.

Inspector Mal Schwartfeger, operations manager of the three police communications centres, said 1.79 million calls were made to the centre last year compared with 1.76 million in 2008.

Police did not keep data of how many of those calls were non-emergency calls, but people could be charged for the misuse of a telephone or wasting police time.

"Each call presented by Telecom and received at a New Zealand police communications centre is considered genuine and responded to appropriately," Mr Schwartfeger said.

A police communicator spent about five minutes on each call, he said.

Under the Telecommunications Act 2001, misuse of a telephone carries a maximum fine of $2000 or up to three months imprisonment.

If Telecom receives more than one false 111 call in a month from the same Telecom phone the company can charge $6 for the second and any subsequent 111 call.