Remember this number, in case you need help, but do not abuse it.

This is the main message that should be spread on a day when the 112 Day is marled all over Europe.

Statistics given to the Maltese media at a press conference last Thursday showed that the emergency service handled by the police received 564,188 calls last year, translated into some 1,500 a day or, to be clearer, one call per minute.

That’s a lot.

But when one considers that 34,860 of these calls were hoax calls – for an average of 95 per day – and that another 47,313 were wrong numbers – another 129 calls per day it is clear that the public out there has not realized the importance of having such an emergency service, and that it should be used for the right purposes.

Placing hoax calls to an emergency number or calling it and then reporting a wrong call is a despicable way of playing with people’s lives.

For it happens very often that the difference between life and death is separated by seconds – and if a genuine call is not taken immediately just because the people employed to answer emergency calls are replying to hoax calls or wrong numbers, people could lose their life. All because of a sick joke.

It is a real pity that there are so many people who have nothing better to do than to call the emergency number just for the fun of it. Their lack of civic sense is immense.

With six people manning consoles at any given time, there is a chance that they are all occupied by hoax calls while a seventh genuine call is on hold – and people could lose their life because of those few seconds that are lost.

People should make use of this 112 number on real cases of emergency – accidents, fires, crime and other dangerous situations. It should not be used improperly.

Although it is probable that most of the hoax calls are made from public numbers and people committing this crime are not very easily identified, the police should find time to investigate hoax calls and possibly bring offenders to book.

A stiff punishment against a perpetrator would go a long way to serve as a deterrent to others who might hold similar ideas.