jsonline | Fewer than 1% of calls from Wisconsin residents who lost their jobs during the pandemic were answered by state officials overseeing unemployment benefits, and the Evers administration did not report key information to lawmakers showing the full scope of the problem, a new state audit shows.
The audit confirms stories the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has heard for months from hundreds of people who were forced out of jobs or work because of the pandemic, and it is being released a week after Gov. Tony Evers fired the agency's secretary over lack of progress in clearing claims from more than 90,000 people.
The analysis from the Legislative Audit Bureau Friday shows 93.3% of the 41 million calls to the state Department of Workforce Development unemployment call centers between March 15 and June 30 were blocked, or callers received a busy signal.
About 6% of callers hung up before reaching anyone and 0.5% of calls were ultimately answered.
But the agency didn't report the full scope of the problem to lawmakers on the audit committee, the audit shows.
Between April and June, the agency reported to Republican audit committee co-chairs Sen. Rob Cowles and Rep. Samantha Kerkman that 4.9 million telephone calls were "blocked, abandoned, and answered."
But auditors found a total of 19.6 million calls were actually blocked or resulted in busy signals.
"That's the piece that is most troubling," Cowles, R-Green Bay, said in an interview.
Amy
Pechacek, former deputy secretary of the Department of Corrections who
now oversees DWD until a new leader is chosen, said in a statement the
agency's antiquated IT system hamstrung staff's ability "to quickly
implement new changes and programs, which prompted even more calls and
questions" to the call centers.
0 comments:
Post a Comment