Centrelink staff will not be able to cope in an expected “perfect storm” of customer enquiries arising out of the debt data-matching scandal, the union representing public service workers has warned.
The Community & Public Sector Union has demanded the federal government immediately suspend the automated big data system, which in the past week has been hammered for its lack of accuracy in determining debts.
“This scheme is an absolute nightmare for thousands of Centrelink customers who’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, and the staff who are bearing the brunt of this mess,” said CPSU assistant national secretary Michael Tull.
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The union called for the data-matching processing to be halted, with Tull citing that to start the year, staff would already have to deal with student benefit applications, work arising from the government’s old age pension cuts and “problems” with Medicare processing.
“The serious problems with this debt recovery program are piling on even more pressure, and feeding more aggression from understandably frustrated customers,” he said.
“Centrelink absolutely doesn’t have enough staff to deal with so many cases. Taking staff from other areas to try to deal with this situation will only cause massive problems elsewhere as well.”
Tull accused the coalition government of causing “real damage” to the department of human services with its refusal to back down from the automated debt letters. The union is recommending that, as short term relief, casual staff at Centrelink be upgraded to permanent roles to accommodate the expected workload.