The government must impose a multi-million ringgit fine on Telekom Malaysia (TM) for disruptions with the new NG MERS 999 emergency system that lasted for at least three days.
Despite complaints from first responders, lawmakers, and members of the general public about serious failures with NG MERS 999, TM merely blamed the disruptions on a surge in call volume after migration of the old MERS 999 platform to the “Next Generation” system on November 16.
“We understand the concerns this has created for individuals and families in moments of urgency, and rest assured we are treating every incident with the highest level of priority,” TM said in a statement yesterday.
However, the nature of medical emergencies means that those “incidents” have passed and their consequences were already felt.
Anecdotal reports suggest multiple deaths over the past few days after a lack of response to 999 calls or the new SaveMe 999 app. Three ambulances were sent to the same incident location. In other instances, ambulances were dispatched to the wrong address or even district.
A woman wrote on Facebook that when she called 999 on November 18 at 5.40am when her father stopped breathing, an ambulance only arrived at 6.23am; her father died.
Another woman said she had also called 999 two days ago when she was helping a car accident victim, but didn’t receive a response to multiple calls. “Alhamdulillah the victim was well and the accident was able to be cleared, but only after some time and with help of other drivers.”
In a third case, a person said a woman died at home after dozens of calls to 999 went unanswered.
Yet, TM’s statement yesterday did not provide basic information about the length or scale of NG MERS 999 disruptions, such as the number and time of unanswered or dropped calls, wrong ambulance dispatches, the number and location of people affected, or deaths attributed to system failures.
In 2023, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned as the chief executive of Optus in Australia, following a nationwide outage that took down phone and internet services for 14 hours. The telco was fined A$12 million (RM33.15 million) for breaches of emergency call rules.
Last September, Optus reportedly suffered two outages that disrupted emergency calls, resulting in the deaths of four people and a warning of potential major financial penalties, Bloomberg reported.
Just hours after TM’s press statement about having taken “immediate measures” to restore the 999 service, Malaysiakini reported that the Ministry of Health (MOH) decided to temporarily revert to the old MERS 999 system for medical emergency calls and ambulance dispatches, effective 10pm last night.
All 21 Medical Emergency Coordinating Centres (MECC) nationwide were reportedly reactivated.
Fix Shortage Of Ambulances In MOH First
NG MERS 999 cost a whopping RM1.25 billion, based on an agreement signed by TM Tech with the government, represented by the Communications Ministry, in July 2024. TM did not explain the problem statement, what the new communications system is trying to solve, or what targets NG MERS 999 aims to achieve.
Its November 16 statement merely used corporate buzzwords like “operational efficiency” and “resource deployment”, without specifying how exactly NG MERS 999 can significantly improve response times.
In fact, TM focuses on the “fully digital” aspect of the platform via its SaveMe 999 app, but fails to explain the problems that this technology is expected to solve. If you can’t identify the problem, then you’ll come up with the wrong solutions.
An anonymous source told me that the main problem with the government’s ambulance service was MOH’s ageing fleet of ambulances, resulting in frequent breakdowns and insufficient ambulances. Most government ambulances are beyond economic repair.
“Hence, even if the emergency hotline is efficient, the lack of ambulances would still render inadequate coverage of services and long response time,” said the high-level source.
“The Ministry of Finance (MOF) may provide funds to purchase new ambulances, but this would be hard to come by as such funds are usually one off for every Malaysia Plan.”
Funding isn’t enough for ambulance maintenance.
“The most fundamental solution is to address the ageing fleet of ambulances and inadequate number of ambulances,” he said. “This would have to happen first; then only we can talk about a mobile app.”
Then-MOH deputy secretary-general (finance) Norazman Ayob told a conference in November 2024 that the ministry was exploring collaborations with private hospitals to “Uberise” ambulance services by creating a shared pool of MOH and non-MOH ambulances that can be deployed to both public and private hospitals.
The 999 hotline currently caters only to government ambulances that only send patients to MOH hospitals. Besides private ambulance services, the Selangor state government launched earlier this month its own ambulance service called Ambulans Kita Selangor.
MOH’s idea then was to lease ambulances, along with drivers and perhaps paramedics.
Unlike the SaveMe 999 app with an unclear objective, Norazman had explained then that an app for the uberisation of ambulance services would function like an e-hailing app, in which the emergency system would divert the nearest ambulance – be it public or private – to the incident location. Users just need to touch a button on the app for an SOS call.
Crucially, users will be able to track the movement of the ambulance on the app and even communicate with the driver – like e-hailing. The driver will register on the app that the patient has been picked up.
The proposed app will also enable users to register their medical history (including allergies), addresses for pick-up, emergency contact numbers of next-of-kin, and preferred hospital (if the user prefers to be sent to a private hospital). All of these details will be sent to the destination hospital so that the emergency medical team will be ready upon arrival of the ambulance.
In addition, when the ambulance driver registers on the app upon picking up the patient, the patient’s registered emergency contacts will be alerted and the ride details shared with them, so that they can wait for the patient at the destination hospital.
Although emergency features like medical history and notification of emergency contacts are already available on smartphones and smartwatches, accessibility depends on the patient’s phone being with them when they arrive at a hospital.
“So, to have an efficient hotline medical emergency service, well-maintained, good-condition and an adequate number of ambulances has to run together with an efficient communication service. The two components must co-exist,” Norazman had said.
He had also said that both government and private hospitals can share the costs of the ambulance pool. Patients only need to pay for the ambulance service if they want to go to a private hospital.
(And yes, according to the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia, some emergency patients do request to go to a private hospital).
Norazman’s idea in the MOH then sounds a lot better and at least more substantive than the SaveMe 999 app in the new NG MERS 999 system. It also directly addresses the problem of ambulance shortages and, at the same time, reduces costs to the government via ambulance leasing.
Although I’m not a fan of apps and I think calling 999 should still be the mainstay form of SOS contact, the idea of pooling ambulances and connecting patients to the nearest ambulance, be it public or private, should be explored.
TM’s statement yesterday did not explain what the main problem was with the 17-year-old MERS 999 platform, simply saying that it could no longer support the country’s “evolving” emergency requirements.
Existing problems of ageing and insufficient ambulances, long ambulance response times due to traffic congestion, and the absence of air ambulance services across Malaysia can’t be addressed with a communications system “upgrade”.
Our emergency requirements aren’t “evolving”; old problems still aren’t fixed with NG MERS 999 that has now, ironically, run into its own emergency.
Boo Su-Lyn is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of CodeBlue.
