Dialing 999? UAE Emergency Number Day Targets Non-Urgent Calls
Residents across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and every neighborhood in between are getting a direct reminder about how they reach emergency services, following a nationwide push from the Ministry of Interior and police general headquarters across the UAE.
Keeping Emergency Lines Open When Every Second Counts
The newly designated UAE Emergency Number Day, observed annually on September 9 under the slogan “Every Second Counts,” targets a very specific habit: dialing 999 for routine questions that belong elsewhere. Police operations rooms want residents to reserve 999 strictly for situations needing urgent intervention, while routing general enquiries and non-emergency police services through 901.
When an incident does strike, how you call matters just as much as the number you pick. Brigadier General Abdul Aziz Al Ahmad, Director of Central Operations at the Ministry of Interior, and Brigadier Turki Abdulrahman bin Faris, Director of the General Department of Operations at Dubai Police, stress that dispatch teams rely entirely on callers providing their exact location, clear circumstances, and direct answers to call-taker questions without delay. To make sure the message lands across diverse communities, awareness campaigns are rolling out in multiple languages.
The annual observance aims to cut down the volume of non-emergency calls clogging up dispatch lines so field teams can reach true crises faster.
