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Cutting staff is easy – especially when you don’t have to deal with the fallout
AS the saying goes, ‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’
That question should find a home among the councillors on the Lib-Dem-Tory cabinet who have busied themselves in recent months pondering over economies to the nationally recognised Careline system.
This allows the elderly suffering from an accident or a medical emergency to sound the alarm, and know that help will come soon.
It offers a peace of mind, the inestimable value of which should not be beyond the comprehension of any politician.
For a small weekly sum, pensioners can avail themselves of this extraordinarily protective system – and they do so, not only in Camden but all over the country.
This system ranks high among the many achievements of welfare politics created in the past 50 years.
Shouldn’t it therefore be best left alone?
Anxious, meddling minds in the cabinet appear to think otherwise. Now, they are chipping away at what is an efficient system by tendering for a call centre to handle calls from pensioners.
At the moment, the service is capably handled by a ‘control room’ on the Gospel Oak estate.
Complaints are being brushed aside. For whatever reason, the long march of modernisation must go on!
Admittedly, the wiseacres say with almost smug satisfaction that they have found a saving of £100,000 a year with the introduction of a new call centre system. But, on analysis, it turns out that that saving is simply being brought about by the dismissal of four staff members, all of whom are on good terms with many pensioners in the borough using Careline.
Guillotining staff is the simplest and crudest way to cut overheads.
It’s the first port of call whenever a new management sets about tidying up finances.
Often it has repercussions in society but all is well with those who wield the axe because it is not they who have to pick up the pieces.
And that, we fear, will be the case here – if this new Town Hall idea is implemented.
However, there is still time – just about – to draw back.
Cannot common sense prevail here?
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