Police Minister Fikile Mbalula. Picture: Bongani Shilubane/ANA Pictures Police Minister Fikile Mbalula. Picture: Bongani Shilubane/ANA Pictures
Johannesburg – Call operators from the national emergency hotline 10111, will be marching to the offices of Minister of Police Fikile Mbalula in Tshwane on Tuesday morning over wage disputes.
They will be doing so with the full support of the South African Policing Union (Sapu) and the newly formed South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu).
Saftu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the 10111 call operators want salaries that are level with those in other government call centers.
“In 2013, 10111 workers met with the Suspended SA Police Service (SAPS) National Commissioner General Riah Phiyega and the Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant-General Lesetja Mothiba in a meeting at Gauteng’s 10111 to address members’ concerns regarding their salary level at SAPS Call Centre because they are not on the same level as other government call centres, despite being the busiest emergency call centre with a with a high work load than the other government call centres,” Craven explained.
“Phiyega instructed that a task team be formed to benchmark their salaries against a few government call centres including Home Affairs, Sassa, Sars, Crime stop and Presidential hotline call centres.
“It was completed on April 30 2016 and the report was compiled and submitted to the Provincial office,” he said.
Craven said that the task team recommended on the report that the salary level at 10111 should be upgraded to salary level 7 which was also approved by the provincial management including the Provincial Commissioner.
“The Provincial Commissioner then sent the benchmarking report to the Acting National Commissioner General Phahlane for approval.
“The Acting National Commissioner then sent his Organizational Development team to do a Job Evaluation of the post of 10111 call centre agents. The job evaluation was completed in about October 2016 and it also recommended Salary Level 7,” he said.
However these recommendation have not been implemented which has led to today’s march.
Sapu spokesperson Oscar Skommere said Tuesday’s march was a “go-slow” at the moment and not a full blown strike as of yet.
“We will be handing over a memorandum and from today we are giving them 14 days to respond positively,” he said.
Skommere made it clear that Sapu would close down all 10111 call centres across the country if their demands were not met.
He confirmed there would be “skeleton staff” handling the 10111 call centres.
National Police spokesperson major-General Sally de Beer confirmed that the march in Tshwane had been authorised.
“There are contingency plans in place to ensure we have no disruptions and that our services to the community continue as normal,” she said.
@Lanc_02
