Pretoria – A crowd of 10111 emergency call centre workers brought traffic to a standstill in Pretoria central on Tuesday, as they demanded better salaries and improved working conditions, threatening to shut down the police's emergency call centre if their demands were not met.
"The 10111 employees would like to present this memorandum of demands to the honourable Minister of Police Fikile Mbalula, expressing our deepest frustration at the slow pace and the deliberate delaying tactics to implement the processes that will improve the terms and conditions of our employment," Bethuel Nkuna, a representative of the 10111 employees said as he read out a memorandum.
He said the working conditions of the emergency call centre were distinctly poor, compared to other government service call centres.
"As a result, a joint task team was established in February 2013 and it completed its work in April 2016. This task team eventually recommended that the employer commissions a job evaluation exercise ... to help determine the appropriate pay packages for 10111 employees. We demand the speedy implementation of that internal report that was completed by October 2016," Nkuna said.
"10111 workers are demotivated because they are underpaid. They are overworked, and they experience dangerous stress levels because of these working conditions. We demand a swift process to implement the outcome of the report. This should be treated with extreme urgency."
Bethuel Nkuna, a representative of the Gauteng 10111 workers, said their protest march to Police Minister Fikile Mbalula's office was a distraction from the fight against crime. VIDEO: ANA
Nkuna said instead of addressing the impasse with the disgruntled employees, it had been established that the police department was now "unilaterally" deploying trained police officers to man the highly critical call centres.
The memorandum called on South African Police Service members to decline manning the call centres. Failure to resolve the impasse would result in a total shutdown of the 10111 service, the workers warned.
"We call for solidarity from police officials, to decline this divide and rule strategy from the SAPS. We will ultimately call for solidarity from the general public. Our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters – if this challenge is not dealt with swiftly and accordingly, we will close down 10111 across the country, for seven days. We demand a fixed timeframe for engagement with management and a timeframe for the full implementation of the recommendations," Nkuna added.
"De-motivated employees are a recipe for compromised service delivery. 10111 employees are the backbone of a swift response in crime conditions. The SAPS can ill afford to have a demotivated and a going-slow workforce." Nkuna said other 10111 employees in other provinces were also marching on Tuesday to the provincial police offices. Mbalula was given 14 days to revert to the workers.
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), led by general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi also joined the protest.
Vavi said Mbalula must ensure that workers' demands were met.
"A deal is a deal. An agreement signed by a former police commissioner Riah Phiyega was signed on behalf of the police. That agreement must be respected and it must be implemented. That agreement says categorically, all of you [10111 workers] are wrongly graded. You are currently at level five but you need to be at level seven. Riah Phiyega said that through the report she commissioned. We agree with Phiyega and her report," said Vavi to cheers from the crowd.
Senior officials from Mbalula's office received the memorandum.