Ekurhuleni Emergency Call Centre letting residents down
by Cllr. Jaco Terblanche — DA Shadow MMC for Community Safety in Ekurhuleni
by Cllr Wendy Morgan — DA Member for the Community Safety Oversight Committee in Ekurhuleni
Date: 20 May 2021
Release: Immediate
Type: Media statement
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Ekurhuleni is dismayed by the poor performance of the City’s Emergency Call Centre.
The City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) Emergency Call Centre is solely responsible for taking calls relating to all life-threatening emergencies and from where dispatchers send out appropriate response vehicles, such as fire engines, rescue vehicles and metro police.
The DA has found that life-threating calls are going unanswered. Records show it happens with more than ten thousand calls a month. Ten thousand!
When Ekurhuleni residents call the Emergency Call Centre, they expect an answer and assistance immediately, yet thousands of their calls go unanswered — a horrifying reality for any resident. In an emergency, every second counts and it could mean the difference between life and death.
During the 2019/2020 Financial Year, these are the number of calls that went unanswered in each month:
The above table shows that more than 137 000 calls were missed. One can only imagine the consequences of these missed calls.
The Emergency Call Centre costs the CoE over R38m each year. Yet, when many Ekurhuleni residents needed these services most, they were denied their right to emergency assistance.
When the ANC-appointed MMC for Community Safety, Cllr. Frans Mmoko, was questioned about the call centre’s response time, he confirmed that 18 minutes was the average response time for the Fire Department, 15 minutes for Ambulance Services and 25 minutes for the EMPD to reach accident scenes.
However, if the scores of complaints about long waits in Ekurhuleni are anything to go by, MMC Mmoko is without a doubt being economical with the truth.
To add insult to injury, the CoE is facing tremendous breakdown-related vehicle shortages, which is crippling the operations of most departments and, as a result, negatively impacting service delivery.
The poor planning, lack of oversight and general maladministration by the ANC and its coalition partners* has led the City’s service delivery to a near standstill and, ultimately, the City’s residents will suffer.
Perhaps the inefficient ANC-coalition* in Ekurhuleni should visit the DA-run City of Cape Town, where the Call Centre is indeed a World-Class operation and monitored effectively. Deadlines and turnaround times are put in place to ensure best minimum standards are reached. This results in public value-based service delivery with the residents of Cape Town feeling the difference of a caring DA government.
#TimeForChange
*Coalition Partners: African Independent Congress (AIC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Patriotic Alliance (PA) and Independent Ratepayers Association of South Africa (IRASA)
Cllr. Jaco Terblanche
DA Shadow MMC for Community Safety in Ekurhuleni
Cllr. Wendy Morgan
DA Member for the Community Safety Oversight Committee in Ekurhuleni
