The health and communications ministries as well as TM, who are jointly operating the new system, said the platform was running as normal.

They said the system still employed the “nearest available” first responder rule in order to send the closest asset quickly to the scene.

Nonetheless, they said they had taken the complaints seriously and had begun looking into them.

This follows an FMT report concerning an apparent outage of the new 999 hotline and its new app. The issue was raised by NGO-run ambulance operators in Penang, who said they received SOS calls saying the 999 system was down.

One operator said those calling for help were forced to wait for hours for their ambulances, while several were spotted arriving at the same scene.

NG MERS 999, which went live on Nov 16, is the new emergency hotline system built to replace the older Malaysian Emergency Response Services, or MERS999, system.

The government and TM said emergency responses would be made stronger with the inclusion of other community and NGO responders.

“More ambulances are being added, staff deployment is being reset at key spots, and aid groups like the Malaysian Red Crescent and St John Ambulance are helping to boost capacity,” they said.

They added that voice calls to 999 still worked as usual while the SaveME999 app acted as a second channel for text, video and other media for emergencies.