The government has decided to delay until at least 2014 a new dispatch system designed to ensure ambulances are sent to the most urgent cases first.
A plan to roll out the Medical Priority Dispatch System in three stages starting next year was unveiled yesterday in a paper submitted to the Legislative Council's security panel.
But the government said it would make a final decision tentatively by 2014 on whether the core of the controversial system - prioritising ambulance calls - would be implemented.
The Fire Services Department has spent almost a decade studying the system as a way of dealing with the rapid increase in ambulance calls, some of which, it said, were unwarranted and amounted to an abuse of the service.
But the staff union and patients' rights groups have opposed the proposed system, fearing that it could lower the level of service.
The department projected last year that the new system could be in place by 2012. In January this year, fire chief Gregory Lo Chun-hung said it could be implemented in 2013.