The Police Commissioner has advised the public not to use the Police Emergency number 999 to make hoax calls as this will only delay their work, especially when attending to genuine emergency calls.

Speaking in a press conference today at the Rove Police Headquarters in Honiara Commissioner John Michael Lansley said people should be calling the triple nine number only to report an emergency to the police.

"I spent an hour and a half yesterday in the communications centre, which is here in Rove and there were approximately seventy 999 calls...now that is a huge number," said the Police Commissioner.

"It would be a huge number if they were all emergency calls, but they were not. Sixty-nine out of the seventy was calls which should not have been made to the triple nine number."

Mr. Langsley said that it was disturbing that people are abusing the system, although they were not entirely hoax calls as some of them were people just dialing the wrong phone number.

He says they are looking at ways to improve the situation as such calls would only delay the polices' response to people who are genuinely wanting to get through to the emergency calling system.