The difficulty in being attended to by emergency telephone number 112 on October 29, the day on which the tragic DANA caused 223 deaths in the province of Valencia, has been one of the most recurring complaints by those affected. And not because the workers who were on the other end of the phone that day did not put in all the necessary effort and professionalism, even above what anyone’s emotional resistance could withstand.
However, the precarious conditions of a service outsourced years ago are behind what was clearly a completely insufficient provision to provide an acceptable response, within the magnitude of the disaster. This is what UGT has been denouncing, which after DANA warned of the risks that this implies for the Valencian citizens who call 112, in critical moments for their safety, their life and their health, according to Amparo López, emergency manager since the year 2007, who was present on the afternoon of the tragedy; Mayte Gabaldón, emergency manager since 2009; and Samuel Declerck, also emergency manager since 2010.
“We were saturated, we were 26 people working and there were a lot of calls waiting, at times more than 100,” while at the same time denying that the system was down or that there were technical failures in receiving calls, despite their enormous volume.
As they explain, the telephone service is awarded to the company Ilunion Emergencies, which implies that this resource that is considered essential was managed with business criteria, which in their opinion is not acceptable and reduces the response and attention to the citizen: ” The lives of many people who call 112 in extreme situations are in the hands of a company that has 60% of the workforce precarious, with partial contracts, overloaded work shifts, with an enormous workload and work pressure, or in a bag work that means not having stable quadrants, nor vacations, with fear of requesting any basic labor rights due to pseudo dismissal (expulsion from the stock market based on non-appealable company criteria). This is how throughout these years, the company has been adopting measures aimed at creating a competitive environment among the workforce, in which results and the number of calls answered take precedence over people.”
And the staff is made up of 127 managers and there are usually between 20% and 25% casualties due to the pressure to which they are subjected or the emotional burden that the work entails. As they denounce, on the day of DANA there was no forecast for an increase in personnel, despite the fact that the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) warned days in advance of the emergency. There were about 26 people working each shift, and at least 24 on sick leave.
“At 9:30 on the morning of October 29, they started calling those of us who were not working to see if we could go. It is their way of proceeding, when there is a peak in calls for whatever reason they start calling the workers who are not on the shift on the fly. Yes, it was reinforced, everyone who could be there was there, but it was done on the fly,” says Gabaldón.
Amparo López spent 10 hours taking calls, starting at 8:00 p.m. on October 29: “It still didn’t seem like much to me, there would have been all the necessary calls. Every call was about people drowning, on a roof, in a car, or elderly people up to their necks in water outside their home. You hung up the phone with tears in your eyes, and returned to answer another similar call in extreme situations. Like this for 10 hours, with the emotional burden that entails,” he says.
López remembers with glassy eyes and a broken voice one of the calls that has remained recorded from that day: “I still hear the voice of an older man who was with his wife in a house that was on the ground floor and he told me that They already had water almost up to their necks. He told me that there was only one access door, that they couldn’t open it and that they couldn’t get out. “I quickly asked him for the address to send the notice.”
Declerck insists that they are “an essential service, which has become a business that must be awarded every two years, extendable for two more years to a company, which increases its business profit margin by doing more with less, fewer managers taking more calls, which means the overflow of the service in the event of any eventuality and poor management of the stress and mental health of the staff and the emergencies themselves.”
In this sense, they regret that the new positions appointed by the President of the Valencian Government, Carlos Mazón, including the Minister of Emergencies and Interior, Juan Carlos Valderrama, have not yet attended to see the 112 facilities and demand that he promote training and staff specialization, manage the service efficiently, taking care of the people they care for for a more humane and effective service to serve citizens, with a management that prioritizes stress management and offers psychological support, and that “Move away from the Contact Center agreement being completely inappropriate for this type of service that is so sensitive to society.” At the same time, they propose direct management and become directly dependent on the administration through the Valencian Society for Comprehensive Management of Emergency Services (SGISE).
For its part, UGT has added: “Unfortunately, DANA has highlighted the fundamentals of this service and the need to strengthen it to be as well prepared as possible and offer the best service in emergencies. If we want a better emergency system, the criterion for improvement cannot only be technical, because behind the cables and coverage there are people, and they must also be cared for and managed correctly. If technically more calls come in and humanly they cannot be managed, nothing makes sense. We demand responsibility from public authorities and fully recognize how the emergency system works in order to improve it.”
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