10111 centres fail

Johannesburg, 05 May 2009

Police emergency centres continue to be plagued by system and equipment failures, despite investments in the latest technology.

This is according to findings in the auditor-general's performance audit of service delivery at police stations and 10111 centres across the country.

The audit, which was conducted over two years - 2007 and 2008 - reveals the use of technology did not have the desired outcome.

The Department of Safety and Security states the report noted that 10111 centres assessed showed inadequate adherence to minimum service levels for reaction time to crimes. The report further revealed there was a lack of adequate and functioning equipment, and inadequate contingency plans for centres to remain operational during systems damage or systems failure.

“This poor showing comes despite the introduction of a new contact centre and management system in February 2008 - which they hoped would allow the police and emergency contact centres to improve policing. The 10111 centres are equipped with a modern radio system to provide radio communication and telephony,” it noted.

The SAPS has stated it has received the AG's report and it is in the process of “compiling a response through its normal channels”. It added this would be done through the assistant commissioner and a detailed response to the report should be available in a week.

Independent study

The Democratic Alliance (DA) says the situation could be much worse than the report reveals. A statement by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA spokesperson on safety and security, says the findings point to “systematic service delivery failings”.

“The contents of the report highlight critical failures across the board, but particularly in the performance of the 10111 call centres, where vast numbers of calls are not attended to. The report reveals that at six of the nine call centres that were audited, no proper statistics are kept on record, so no auditing was possible. In the other three call centres, 79% of received emergency calls were abandoned while on hold, abandoned while in a call queue, or abandoned before being answered.”

Kohler-Barnard also states the report fails to give details on the various problems and says an independent audit is necessary.

“It also gives the impression that the auditor-general's office is unwilling to provide the kind of transparency that is to be expected of it in commissioning these sorts of reports. In its present state, this report cannot be used as a tool to assess future progress at particular police stations. It is thus now essential that the auditor-general's office, at the very least, releases the full data sets that were used in the compilation of the report, so that they might be independently studied.”

But wait...

The report states that while not all technology implemented is fully operational, the police vehicle tracking and management system has shown some successes.

Eight thousand police vehicles so far in Gauteng have been equipped with automatic vehicle location devices and all emergency response police personnel will have Tetra radios with digital tracking.

This will allow the 10111 centre to track the response time and route taken by every police vehicle responding to an emergency.

The Department of Safety and Security has also revealed it will upgrade switching centres and that talks are being held with Telkom to divert all 10111 calls to the nearest police station when systems fail at 10111 centres.