Latest / Drive with John Perlman / Otherwise engaged: Nearly 1.8 million 10111 calls abandoned as SAPS admits staffing crisis

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Otherwise engaged: Nearly 1.8 million 10111 calls abandoned as SAPS admits staffing crisis · Drive with John Perlman

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: You're with John Pullman on 702.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Let's walk the talk.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Right, let's focus our attention now on a story I've
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: been talking about quite a bit on the show and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: still keen to get your experience of dealing with 10-triple-1
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: if you have a story to share this all prompted
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: by a question asked of acting police minister for rose
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: kachali about the effectiveness of the 10 triple one emergency
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: call system now in the 2025-26 financial year which is
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the latest year for which we have data Almost 1.8
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: million of about 9 million calls to that emergency number
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: were actually abandoned. In providing a reply to that, the
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: acting police minister acknowledged that the ratio of operators to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: incoming calls is, quote, severely inadequate to meet public demand.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But is it just a question of hiring more people
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: or is there something wrong with the system itself? Does
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: it need a complete revamp? Ian Cameron is chair for
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the parliamentary portfolio committee on policing a da member of
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: parliament of parliament and these figures were delivered in response
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: to a question that he asked i believe mr cameron
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: welcome and thanks very much for your time i just
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: want to be clear at the outset as to what
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: an abandoned call actually means. Does that mean that the
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: line dropped in which it might be, in case it
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: might be a technical problem, or does it specifically refer
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: to the operator actually hanging up? Good afternoon to you.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Good afternoon. So it's a call that either didn't go through,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: that they know, but it wasn't answered. There are several
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: reasons for why that might be. It could be that
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: they hung up, whether deliberately or not, but they basically
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: lost the call. So anything where a call was made
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: that they couldn't receive the assistance that they were meant to. Okay.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, the reason I ask is there is an
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: overall problem which would, you know, apply to many of
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the scenarios you've just sketched out, but then there could
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: be specific problems. Some of them could be solved by
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: hiring more people, as the minister seems to imply, and
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: others may be, you know, beefing up the technical system.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: What's at the root of the problem? I mean, this
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: is clearly not fit for purpose. We should, I suppose,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: acknowledge there's been improvement in some years it seemed to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: get better between 2021 the financial year in 2023 and
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: now it appears to be getting worse again how do
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you understand.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: That Yeah, I think there are two elements. I think
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: one needs to divide it probably into two separate approaches.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: The one is human resource capacity. The minister is 100%
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: correct when he says that there is a significant human
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: resource shortage. We understand that. But I think technologically, 101
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: is really lagging quite far behind. If we compare the
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: systems that we are running, generally speaking, they are decades behind.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Let me give you a very simple example. If you
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: call 10-triple-one right now, they've got no way of seeing
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: where you are calling from. Something that basic could potentially
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: be the difference between life or death. So, So I
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: can go on. The long and the short of it
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: is it's a combination of human resource management issues along
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: with technological challenges.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask a question that you can possibly
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: dismiss in a sentence, but here it is. Do we
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: actually need the system? I get that we need an
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: emergency response system, but is this it?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: So I get why you're asking the question. I think
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: the answer would be, and this is just a personal
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: point of view, I think we should be able to
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: run with one generic emergency system because people already call 10-triple-1,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: whether it's for a fire, medical assistance, et cetera. I
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: know there are other numbers to call. The point is just,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: generally speaking, 10-triple-1 is that number that you learn from
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: being very young.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: So I think it should actually be bolstered, it should
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: be strengthened, especially because the large majority of South Africans
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: don't have access to private sector help. It's critical for
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: 11111 to function properly. We have seen utterances before by
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: previous ministers of police, etc., indicating that they would consider
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: some kind of a national integrated system, emergency system. system.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: But unfortunately, we haven't really seen decent development of that.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is something you may have
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: done or you plan to do or whether you agree
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: it needs doing, but it's one thing to bring in
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: more people. But if the circumstances under which people are
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: working is not necessarily going to be mitigated by the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: fact that there are more hands on deck, I mean,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: you can have more hands on deck, but if the
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: ship is leaking and sinking, then I'm not sure how
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: much that would help. And I'll tell you what I
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: mean by that and get your response. If, for example,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: you know when you take the call and you identify
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: where the problem is, that there probably isn't a vehicle
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: that's going to go and help. I don't know what
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: people do. I mean, the levels of demoralization and dismay
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: may be very, very high, so much so that more
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: people in the room might not actually make a difference.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's extremely difficult. If you go and
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: speak to some of the 1-800-1-1 operators, the large majority
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: of them, I believe, are really passionate about what they do.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And they totally understand the reason for how critical their
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: work is, etc. But they don't have decent career progression. Now,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: SAS would like to try and explain it otherwise. The
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: point is I spend a lot of time speaking to
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: these members. I receive their complaints, et cetera. They beg
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: to go on courses. Many of them used to be
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: clerks in the South African police service. They're appointed for administration.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Later on were transferred to become constables. But since then,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: they've been stuck in those ranks, and they see zero
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: career progression. So just something that small, you can imagine
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: the impact it would make on morale. And then obviously
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: you need to ensure that the actual reactive capacity is there.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: For example, a flying squad or a highway patrol that
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: could then respond if they were dispatched by 10-1-1. Yeah.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Just by the way, when I said the numbers are
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: moving in a particular way, I was going on the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: actual totals of abandoned. But I think the point that
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: maybe needs to be made is what percentage of calls
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: were abandoned And even though we're looking at around 20%
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: in 25, 26, there has been some improvement in some
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: years where that percentage has gone down. Do we know
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: what happened in that time? I don't think anyone in
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: their wildest dreams would say, well, there are fewer calls
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: because there's been less crime. But did we see some
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: green shoots of something better in the years when the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: percentage went down? And that was sharply the case between
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: 2024 and 2025.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it depends from 101 Center to 101 Center. It's
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: not generally the case. In fact, if you look over
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: the past three financial years, there was actually a decrease
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: in calls by more or less 2%, which is not major,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: but the increase in dropped calls is just over 20%.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So if you look at the national average, it's still
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: quite high. But that being said, it is important to
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: acknowledge that in certain places there were small improvements, and
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: obviously we would love to build on that.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Thanks very much, Ian Cameron, a dear member of Parliament,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: chairs Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Policing. I'm going to see
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: if we can get someone to talk to about what
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: it is like to work in a 10-triple-1 centre, because
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I would have thought the demands on you, your attention
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: to detail, your ability to stay calm when you're dealing
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: with somebody in a state of at the very least,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: agitation and possibly extreme fear. I think this must be
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: pretty tough work. And again, I'm just throwing this out
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: as an appeal. If anyone's done that kind of work,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: please do give us a call, not to mention the maddening,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: maddening experience you must have and the emotion you must
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: feel when people call to 10-triple-one and play the fool
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: and try and get you to take seriously something that's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: clearly a hoax. More on that later. Let's do business.