Calls to Telstra went unheeded

The death of a 10-year-old boy in rural Victoria has brought to light 
the abject failure of the Government's Telstra privatisation policy. While 
continually maintaining that, despite massive layoffs, customer service is 
improving, Telstra's secret database has revealed a backlog of 100,000 
unfixed faults.

The Boulding family's telephone line had been down for 10 days, despite the 
mother's repeated calls to Telstra.

Mrs Boulding had begged for urgent attention because she had two asthmatic 
children who required regular emergency treatment. Being blind, she was 
unable to drive them to hospital herself.

Unfortunately, during one such emergency last week, without a phone to call 
an ambulance, her 10-year-old son died.

"Telstra's program of staff reductions, budget cuts and outsourcing is 
proving disastrous for people who rely on their telephones", said Ian 
McCarthy, NSW Telecommunications Secretary of the CEPU.

"Now management appear to have the very tragic death of 10-year-old Sam 
Boulding on their conscience. Sam's parents have every right to blame 
Telstra's senior managers and to seek and explanation so that the lives of 
other people are protected during an emergency.

"This problem is particularly acute in rural areas where many technical 
staff have been forced to cover extremely short staffing by massively 
increased overtime. It's therefore thoroughly duplicitous of Telstra to 
offer the weak excuse, which I've seen in media reports, that the company 
couldn't afford the overtime required to fix the Boulding's phone."

Telstra has axed 40,000 jobs since 1996, with a further reduction of 10,000 
slated for this year.

"In further good news for consumers and business the quality of basic 
telephone services increased, with ... a reduced number of reported 
faults", crowed Communications Minster Richard Alston on 13 February, in 
response to the Australian Communications Authority's Annual Report.

This was, however, in direction contradiction to the ACA's findings, which 
state: "In 2000-01, Telstra reported that ... the number of faults reported 
increased."

After the death of the boy in Victoria, Alston was further embarrassed when 
forced to table in parliament Telstra's National Faults Database, which 
runs to 2168 pages and details around 100,000 faults — some dating back to 
1995.

Victorian Secretary of the CEPU Communications branch, Len Cooper, said, 
"Telstra staff can't keep up; they are stressed beyond belief; they can't 
keep working the extra hours required to travel ridiculous distances to 
provide service.

"Telstra' disastrous cost cutting campaigns in order to please the stock 
market and lift the share price — which has failed anyway — is the root 
cause of this tragic and disgraceful situation", said Mr Cooper.