The Independent Policing Union of SA says it welcomes the call by Parliament to come up with a plan for more staff at the 10111 call centres.
THE INDEPENDENT Policing Union of South Africa (Ipusa) says it welcomes the call by Parliament to come up with a plan for more staff at the 10111 call centres.
This follows after it was widely reported that the police’s 10111 call centres are in a crisis because of staff shortages.
Bethuel Nkuna Nephtal from Ipusa told eNCA that this was caused by an “ill-advised” agreement signed in 2019 by the SAPS and so-called recognised unions.
The union attributed staff shortages to an agreement signed by workers’ unions and the SAPS in 2019, which essentially saw 10111 call centre workers who previously worked under the Public Service Act being categorised under the Police Act.
“The agreement that was signed in 2019 has also put more in the shortages of staff members – in 2017 all 10111 staff members went on strike demanding better salaries, but instead of SAPS resolving the issue they chose to infringe all members’ rights to strike by saying they were translating all 10111 members in to the Police Act.
“So by virtue of that translation, members who had tattoos in their bodies or having previous criminal case and members who were not interested in being translated, they had to leave the environment and that has depleted more 10111 staff members.
“So it shows from the management that there is no care, instead of increasing the numbers of the 10111 call centres they added more in terms of depleting the numbers by the virtue of that agreement that strongly excluded people who have tattoos and all those who weren’t interested in being translated,” Nephtal said.
He said further that if the SAPS had it followed the audit report in terms of what the members were demanding it would not have found itself in this situation.
“There was a benchmark team and that team was against what other government call centres, specifically what they are earning and an audit team was sent out nationally in order to do job evaluation.
“The recommendation of those reports vindicated the members’ demands that the salary of the 10111 members should he equal to all government call centres, but instead of following that route they neglected their own audit report and chose to translate members.
“Their own vision was to prevent members of 10111 from striking by signing the agreement of 2019, which has also depleted us in terms of man power.”
With concerns regarding the skills of call centre agents that take emergency calls, Nephtal said they are very confident because there are no 10111 members that enter the environment without the prerequisite skill.
“There is a comprehensive that is being offered before a member can be accepted into the environment. So any complaints where the skill-set is being questioned, it’s only when members are being over-worked,” Nephtel said.
He further added that they are hoping that their matter will be resolved as a matter of urgency.
“We even had to undergo grievances where the matter was even taken to the Public Service Commission in which they came back to us to say in Parliament they have been told that there is a 10,000 new intake that will be coming and they are hoping that we will be getting some members there as well.
“Unfortunately, the new intakes have been deployed and none of those members are being deployed to the 10111 call centres, so the discussion we will be having is to go back to the PSC to resurrect on what has been promised,” he said.
