By MALIBONGWE DAYIMANI and NONSINDISO QWABE
Fielding traumatising calls about rapes, suicides and murders for 12 hours a day has left many South African Police Service 10111 call centre operators calling for psychological help.
The operators yesterday said the job, which includes counselling suicidal callers, was so traumatic and stressful that it left most of them depressed and in need of counselling themselves.
This was revealed yesterday, when thousands of disgruntled workers aligned to the South African Policing Union (Sapu), who also complained about being overworked and underpaid, took to various police provincial headquarters across the country to deliver memorandums containing lists of their demands.
Yesterday close to a 100 control room operators from Mthatha, Komani, Grahamstown, East London and Port Elizabeth call centres converged at King William’s Town for a march to the provincial SAPS head offices in Zwelitsha over “stressful” and “poor” working conditions.
One of the operators who took to the streets yesterday, Noluvuyo Makeleni, is from the Port Elizabeth call centre.
She said a majority of the calls they dealt with were so traumatic that they also affected their well-being when they were away from the office.
“We were never trained as psychologists but we have to convince suicidal people not to end their lives,” she said.
Makeleni said out of the 100-odd calls she received every day, 90 of them were traumatising and left her devastated.
“After 12 hours of work you can’t even have time for your family.
“We suffer from depression. Sometimes you pick up a call about your own relatives being murdered or burnt to death, and the employer is not assisting us with emotional or psychological support.”
The operators told the Daily Dispatch that after dispatching police officers to the scenes they also had to dispatch ambulances, firefighters and traffic officers – which they claim was going beyond their call of duty.
The close to 100 workers who marched to the Zwelitsha police headquarters yesterday also demanded promotion from a salary level of 5 to 7, which would see their salaries increase from R13000 to R19000 per month.
They also complained about discrepancies in salary scales and inaccurate posting, with some saying “for instance we are posted as level 5 but paid at level 4”.
Yesterday’s march, the protesters said, comes in the wake of claims that police bosses were planning to rank the call centre operators as police constables.
“If we are made constables, it means that we would qualify for promotion after 10 years and that cannot happen,” Nosipho Mzuku said.
Reading their memorandum from the back of a van in front of the Zwelitsha police headquarters, Minikazi Poswayo told the deputy provincial head of human resources, Majo-General Nomalady Dlani, to respond to the memorandum within 14 days.
Addressing police top brass he said: “You hear from us about complaints and we dispatch police members to the scene so if we don’t get a response within 14 days, then there will be trouble.”
Dlani, who accepted the memorandum on behalf of provincial police commissioner Major-General Liziwe Ntshinga, said the memorandum would be forwarded to the national head offices in Pretoria.
“The police force is the competency of the national office so I will give this to Major-General Ntshinga who will then send it to the national office within seven days,” she said.
Phindile Nkumanda from the East London call centre said the workers also wanted the Public Service Act that they had to adhere to, to be amended. A similar protest took place in Pretoria yesterday where a memorandum was delivered to police minister Fikile Mbalula. — malibongwed@dispatch.co.za/ nonsindisoq@dispatch.co.za