Over 1.2 million calls to Gauteng’s police emergency call centre were “dropped” from 1 March 2023 and 1 March this year.
In a recent parliamentary reply, South African Police Service (SAPS) national commissioner General Fannie Masemola revealed that the most number of dropped calls in the country were to the 10111 Command Centre in Midrand.
During that period, over 4.1 million calls were made to the emergency line in Midrand.
At the time, dropped calls to other centres in the country were between 9500 and over 360000.
Masemola explained in his reply that the system registered dropped calls as abandoned calls.
“In terms of the CISCO manual, an abandoned call is considered abandoned if it is not answered by an agent or the caller hangs up before being connected to an agent or the call is disconnected. This includes situations where the caller hangs up while queued and waiting. A high number of abandoned calls might be an indication that callers are waiting in the queue due to reasons further explained below.”
“Abandoned calls can also include silent voice calls, a false report, a prank call, misdialled calls, misrouted calls, alternate routed calls, medical and other emergencies and crime related emergencies.”
Calls abandoned 10 seconds are all the calls that are terminated by the caller within a period of 10 seconds before the call could be transferred to a call taker.
Calls abandoned in more than 10 seconds are calls terminated by the caller after a period of 10 seconds before the call could be transferred to a call taker.
Calls abandoned at agents indicate all the calls that are terminated by the caller and which have already been transferred to a call taker to answer.
Masemola said the SAPS was not able to provide the actual number of deployed personnel at the 10111 command centres, as it may compromise the operational effectiveness of the SAPS and undermine the safety and security of deployed personnel.
However, he provided percentages which showed that the number of personnel were less than half of what was “ideal.”
“In determining the organisational structure of the service, which incorporate business units like the 10111 Call Centres, Organisational Development (OD) will perform a work study investigation to determine theoretically the ‘ideal number’ of posts’ required to perform a specific function. The ‘ideal number of posts’ does not constitute the fixed establishment of the service. The ideal situation refers to the number of resources which the SAPS should ideally have to perform a specific function/responsibility.”
“A “fixed establishment” means the system designed to determine the requirements regarding post establishments and physical resources and compares the actual situation with the funded situation in a specific financial year in order to identify shortages or surpluses (It further refers to the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) that determines the number of funded posts allocated to the Service within a specific time frame.”
“In other words, it means the resources which the Service should allocate to a particular component, for specific functions or responsibilities, for a specific period). “Funded posts” means the number of posts funded in terms of the current budget and Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) for a specific year,” he said.
Masemola said the SAPS was in the process of concluding on a revised Fixed Establishment (FE) for the 2024/2025 financial year in line with the adjusted budget apportioning.
“The revised fixed establishment will absorb a total of 535 additional new entry-level constables who have been allocated to the 10111 call centres.”
