The Presidency has at last admitted that it is not able to handle the overwhelming number of phone calls made to the presidential hotline.
Collins Chabane, Minister for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, said on Wednesday in a written reply to a Parliamentary question from Joe McGluwa of the Independent Democrats that up until November 27 the line had received 30 650 calls.
”No,” he said, ”the presidential hotline is not able to handle the call load at this stage.
”Even if we were to scale up the number of call agents, we can only do so up to a certain limit — given that resources are limited … we are working at integrating existing government call centres to reduce the load on the presidential hotline.”
But he added that before more resources can be allocated to the hotline, there should be investigations as to whether efficiencies are being achieved across all government hotlines. ”That investigation is currently under way,” he said.
The minister told McGluwa that the top three categories of calls referred to employment or the world of work, housing, and legal matters. He also assured him that calls from cellphones can be made to the hotline.
”In fact, approximately 95% of all calls we receive are from mobile lines,” he said. — I-Net Bridge