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The numbers with regard to calls received and resolved on the presidential hotline released this week do not reflect citizens' appalling experience of the manner in which their queries are handled and resolved. The Democratic Alliance (DA) can personally attest to this and we have also received reports from members of the public who have had similar experiences.

Not only is it extremely difficult to register a complaint on the presidential hotline but once this is achieved, callers are faced with a whole new range of problems. Queries that go missing on the system, sent to the wrong departments, or are claimed to have been resolved, are just some of the frustrating problems we have experienced in our attempt to register complaints with the hotline over the past few months. In reality nothing concrete is being done to address complaints and all the hotline seems to be doing is shift the problem onto someone else.

Example 1: Paul Ngobeni - 60 days only to be referred to a different number

The DA's complaint on the appointment of fugitive Paul Ngobeni, which we registered in September when the hotline was launched is one example of this. We received an email this week suggesting that we take the matter to the Chief Director of Legal Services. In another matter, in their feedback with regard to our complaint on corruption in a local municipality, the operator suggested that we call the person we were complaining about ourselves since the complaint is over two months old and "South Africa is a free country, you have the right to access information". He tried to brush off the complaint and seemed eager to close the case. He eventually conceded that they do not know what is going on with this complaint and that someone else could be investigating it and that we should "log another call."

In both cases, it took the hotline more than 60 days to respond to our complaints and then only to tell us to ask someone else!

Example 2: Racial Profiling

It has now come to light that the hotline also seems to be racially profiling callers before helping them with their complaints. This week, in a follow-up on a newspaper article, a citizen told the DA that he was so "traumatised" by the way a hotline operator dealt with him when he tried to register a complaint, that he won't be phoning the hotline again. The caller told us that the operator traumatised him when she asked about his skin colour. "She asked my ID number and if I was coloured or black". When he questioned why that was important, she said it was needed to issue him with a reference number. He states that when he phoned the hotline "the lady on the line could hardly speak English or spell my name or surname." The complainant says that the operator humiliated and insulted him and after being put on hold for 10 minutes, he abandoned the call. He never got a reference number and does know whether his complaint has been registered.

The statistics on the hotline do not reflect these experiences and the hotline only serves to highlight the ANC's lax attitude towards customer service in this country. Instead of giving ordinary South Africans a voice as repeatedly stated by president Zuma, it seems the unprofessional and humiliating manner in which operators and staff are dealing with callers is actually leaving citizens who access it with a bitter taste in their mouth. Their unpleasant experiences seem to deter people from using the presidential hotline and thereby effectively leaving them voiceless.

The poor customer care experienced by the DA and members of the public, who have made use of the hotline, has now also been confirmed by government. In its latest quarterly report, the presidency concedes that "...we need to do more to improve the attitude and performance of our public service to citizen care..." The presidency now admits that "the response of some government Departments and Provinces to enquiries has been far from satisfactory".

The laissez-faire attitude of the ANC government towards customer care is evident in all of its departments and plays a big role in the overall ineffectiveness of the ANC-led government to deal with the problems facing South Africa. This behaviour is further fuelled by the ANC's utter refusal to hold its officials accountable, or to take action against those who fail on their mandate.

Conclusion

It is quite clear that the hotline will not be effective as a mechanism for citizens to use to engage with government if government departments and provinces are not on board and if the ANC fails to stop dealing with citizens in a way that leaves them feeling humiliated and powerless. This is imperative since it is the national and provincial structures that are meant to take action against complaints registered with the hotline. The presidency now reports that "The Minister in the Presidency, Collins Chabane is working with Departments to ensure that the situation is resolved without delay and that Departments put more effective mechanisms and resources to respond to enquiries. He is also working to ensure that the service performs better at a technical and human resource level."

The DA will be monitoring this process closely and will be asking parliamentary questions in this regard. The DA also plans to ask questions with regard to the disturbing report of the hotline's racial profiling of callers brought to light this week.

In spite of the problems experienced and reported by the DA with regard to the presidential hotline, government still claims that "Through this service, hundreds of people have managed to have problems attended to and resolved, and it has set a new trend with regard to citizen care." Clearly this is not the case. Instead the hotline has left us and many citizens frustrated, insulted, humiliated and traumatised.

Unless government implements an integrated and effective referral system followed with measurable action steps with regards to resolving complaints registered, the presidential hotline will be nothing more than yet another government initiative which government continues to pump money into without addressing the inherent structural problems.