A "perfect storm" is the reason with which this Friday the Councilor for Territorial Coordination, Citizen Participation and Transparency, Silvia Saavedra, justified the operating problems that Línea Madrid has been dragging for weeks, the municipal telephone service on 010. "There has been a problem, which is being solved," admitted the person in charge of the service, although the number of calls rejected by this service has been reduced to 35%.
Her argument is that the entry of a new management company, NTT Data, has coincided in time with the voluntary period for the payment of municipal taxes,
a change in the applications of the Tax Agency for the payment of the Real Estate Tax (IBI) and the census, and to this has been added a call for subsidies from the regional government that required the census certificate.
"The service is not well dimensioned", has refuted the councilor Pilar Sánchez (Más Madrid), who has used municipal data to remember that the telephone service has come to reject 80% of calls.
"These are shameful data," she added.
"The problem has not been solved with its patches", also reproached the councilor of the Mixed Group, Marta Higueras, during the commission.
"Of every 100 people, 58 see their calls rejected because they are saturated, 207% more than when they were not in the Government," she pointed out, also with data from the City Council.
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Saavedra explained that one of the solutions that the City Council has chosen to improve the service has been to reinforce the staff, since they have hired 150 workers.
And he has found that the socialist councilor Álvaro Vidal reproached him that a month ago he announced that there would be 160 employees.
The councilor explained that the municipal offices are serving 25% more than in 2021. Specifically, in November 108,460 people have been served in the offices, while 010 has received 18,000 calls a day.
According to Saavedra, in the last fortnight of November 18% more calls were answered.
"They are not specific problems, nor because of the landing of a new company," stressed the socialist mayor, who has branded Saavedra's arguments as "excuses."
"The staff is overwhelmed", he has settled.
Another of the reproaches that the person in charge of the service has received has been the queues of elderly people at the doors of the offices, as Pilar Sánchez, from Más Madrid, reminded her.
According to Saavedra, however, there is "0% rejection among people over 65" in the offices, because they are attended without prior appointment and as a matter of priority.
"The redimensioning [of the service] is adequate," she considered.
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