Call centres under siege by strikers

STRIKING 10111 call centre operators in the Eastern Cape are allegedly flooding the province’s four emergency call centres with threatening calls aimed at temporary staff.

The South African Police Union (Sapu) is on a legal national strike over pay.

Hundreds of emergency call centre staff affiliated to the union abandoned their phones yesterday after their memorandum of demands submitted on June 6 was rejected.

Provincial police spokeswoman Brigadier Marinda Mills said: “We are in discussions about a court order to interdict the workers from abusing our workers.

“We warn them to refrain from this illegal way of striking. Their behaviour is abusive.”

East London call centre commander Captain Tommy Adlam said: “We have recorded all their calls, swearing and threatening our workers with violence.

“They know the rules of a strike, but now they are breaking those rules.”

Mills also accused the strikers of violating the rule that strikers must stay 100m from the gates.

But Sapu Eastern Cape spokeswoman Phumza Sithole, standing with 22 placard-waving strikers 10m from the West Bank police complex’s perimeter gates, said they were far from the call centre itself.

Sithole denied that strikers had called the centre and sworn at temporary workers or called them traitors.

Mills said: “The four SAPS 10111 centres in the Eastern Cape [Mthatha, Port Elizabeth, Queenstown and East London] are running efficiently as advance notification was received about the labour action planned.”