16 January 2007
Desperately understaffed Local Area Commands are relying on volunteers to plug shortages in support staff, the Public Service Association warned today.
The PSA said members working as frontline support for police officers were feeling the pinch from on-going job cuts, which have seen 300 positions cut by the Iemma Government and more under threat by the opposition’s plan for 20,000 job cuts.
PSA general secretary John Cahill said volunteers recruited to develop better links between police and the community were clearly being misused, asked to handle sensitive and confidential information without adequate training.
“According to our members volunteers have been asked to do everything from sitting in the backroom all day filing to cataloguing offender photographs and logging child pornography,” Mr Cahill said.
The PSA is calling on both sides of politics to cease the political auction on job cuts and make a serious commitment to maintain services in NSW.
“You cannot cut jobs without effecting services and the NSW Police is a classic example. Cutting support staff in police stations has already seen some Local Area Commands resorting to extreme measures.”
Mr Cahill said volunteers were a wonderful resource when they are deployed into the community but police need highly trained professional staff providing support back at the station.
“Police officers have been placed between a rock and a hard place. Sacrifice time in the field to complete necessary paperwork or allocate your workload to a volunteer who isn’t authorised or shouldn’t be doing those tasks.”
The PSA has put forward a number of recommendations that would help address staff shortages and ensure volunteers and sworn police are able to get back to their valuable work in the community.
The PSA today called for a ratio of frontline police to support staff to be established to ensure that increases to police numbers are mirrored by an increase in civilian staff.
It also called for strict guidelines for Volunteers in Policing to ensure that their key role of developing links between police and the community is reinstated and they are no longer asked to conduct confidential police work.
Contact Details
John Cahill, General Secretary
Ph: 02 9220 0982
Fax: 02 9262 1623
psa@psa.asn.au
