President Jacob Zuma's hotline has handled more than 30 000 calls since its launch in October this year. In a parliamentary reply, the Minister in the Presidency, Collins Chabane, states that more than 9 000 cases have been resolved. However, the hotline cannot handle the call load due to a lack of resources – which will be extended once the efficiency of the hotline has been established.

The Department of Human Settlement leads the pack with resolving about 86% of about 3 000 calls. It is followed by the Department of Sport and Recreation and Trade and Industry with just under 80%. Complaints range from municipal services, housing shortages, unfair labour practice and financial services including complaints about banks.

While this year has been treated as a pilot phase the government will continue to improve in resolving the problems. The Directors General have been instructed by their Ministers to monitor the responses and resolution rates of there departments and provinces on regular basis.

The Independent Democrats (ID) has called for an increase in the presidential hotline's R4 million budget so that it could be more effective. The presidential hotline, launched three months ago, has resolved about a third of complaints from more that 30 000 calls between September and November.

ID MP, Joe Mcgluwa, says the hotline lacks the resources to resolve cases quick enough: “Service delivery is a very demanding and there is an increasing sense of urgency. Also the reaction of the hotline is not fast enough. We therefore call on the presidency to urgently look at hiring more call centre agents so that we can speed up service delivery.” 

Two months ago, President Jacob Zuma admitted that the presidential hotline was experiencing some teething problems.  The president however assured South Africans that the problems were being sorted out.  The president was speaking at the official launch of the hotline in Pretoria.

Zuma has since told journalists that the call centre’s biggest challenge is trying to cope with the high volume of calls everyday.  He said the staff has been instructed to deal with one issue at a time - which explains why it takes a while before they can move on to the next call.