The Presidency has once again brushed off the poor performance of its national hotline, saying the service is still only a pilot. It has pledged to increase the resources and support available to it.
The hotline, initially costing R4 million, was established as a pilot on 14 September. However, it has since struggled to handle high call volumes and has been marred by poor co-operation and response from government departments against which complaints have been lodged.
Problems experienced in the first three weeks of operation also saw the budget allocations for the service almost triple to R11 million.
“The Presidency has treated this financial year as a pilot phase, and will continue to improve the service and deal with whatever bottlenecks still remain. It is an effective service and we are daily encouraged by the excitement of people whose enquiries have been resolved,” says the Presidency.
The Presidency reports that in the first month of the hotline's operation, only 12% of the opened calls with provinces were resolved; in October, 26% of calls were resolved and this increased to 31% in November.
Overall, only 18% of total calls opened with provinces in the past three months were resolved. With the national departments, in September, only 19% of calls opened were resolved. However, the average response over the past three months is 33%.
Improving systems
Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane says he is working with departments to resolve the situation without delay and has called on departments to provide more effective mechanisms and resources to respond to enquiries. The Presidency is also working to ensure the service performs better at a technical and human resource level, he added.
The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) was involved in providing the call centre's technology, which cost taxpayers R1.7 million. The fixed technology infrastructure mostly leverages off SITA's existing infrastructure. The technology platform for the telephony and service management cost R800 000, and has been built around SITA's existing platform. The agency's expansion of its existing call centre to accommodate the new service will cost R600 000, while licensing and maintenance costs are R300 000.
The Presidency says more needs to be done to improve the attitude and performance of the service. While the directors-general have been instructed by their ministers to monitor the response and resolution rates of their departments on a regular basis, they are yet to be given access to the hotline IT platform to use it as a monitoring tool.
“While the hotline has been successful in resolving enquiries, the response of some government departments and provinces to enquiries has been far from satisfactory,” says Chabane.
Slow responses
The Presidency says the hotline continues to receive complaints regarding municipal services, labour issues, housing shortages, land claims, crime, poverty relief, financial service complaints, parastatals, breach of contracts by governments, funding requests and complaints from political parties.
Between 14 September and 20 November, the Western Cape reported the highest number of resolved calls, with 44%. KwaZulu-Natal only resolved 18% of calls, while the Eastern Cape and Northwest province resolved 11% of their calls. Gauteng resolved 19% of calls, Mpumalanga and Limpopo 13% of calls, Northern Cape 17%, and the Free State managed to resolve 16% of calls.
KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng reported the most calls, with 4 002 and 3 166, respectively, with the Western Cape receiving only 515 calls and 245 for the Northern Cape.
The best-performing departments were the departments of human settlements and trade and industry. Minister Tokyo Sexwale's department resolved 86% of the 2 321 calls it received, while trade and industry resolved 72% of the 129 calls it received. The worst-performing departments were the South African Police Services, Department of Energy, the South African Revenue Services and the Independent Complaints Directorate.
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