Here is the alarming number of 10111 calls dropped or unanswered in Gauteng
· Citizen
An average of 1 700 emergency calls to the South African Police Service’s (Saps) 10111 line were dropped or went unanswered every day in Gauteng for 12 months.
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Nationally, 8.9 million 10111 calls were made during the 2025-26 financial year, with 1.7 million – roughly 20% – ending without being attended to.
Gauteng’s 10111 call centre in Midrand received just under half of all emergency calls in the country – 4.4 million – with 14% recorded as dropped or unanswered.
For the calls that were answered, the Midrand office had the second-slowest response, with callers needing to wait an average of 13 seconds to be assisted.
Only the Western Cape’s Maitland office was worse at 26 seconds, while Port Elizabeth and Hilton were the quickest with three and four seconds, respectively.
Nine 10111 call centres
The office of the minister of police provided the stats for nine 10111 call centres via a written response to a parliamentary question.
Three of the call centres are located in KwaZulu-Natal, two in Mpumalanga, and one each in Gauteng, the Free State and the Western and Eastern Cape.
The police ministry confirmed that while 3.8 million calls were answered at the Gauteng office, 635 000 went unattended.
The Midrand site had recorded more than four million calls every year since 2020-21, with that year being the highest, at 4.8 million.
In that year, 1.69 million calls were dropped or went unanswered, with the numbers decreasing every year since.
Durban and Cape Town call centres were the only other offices to breach one million calls over a 12-month period.
Gauteng outperformed the Cape Town and Durban offices, which recorded dropped and unanswered rates of 29% and 24%, respectively.
‘Limited capacity’
Insufficient human resources were cited as the reason for slow responses and long wait times.
“The current ratio of 10111 call centre operators to incoming calls is severely inadequate to meet public demand.
“Significant numbers of calls are logged as ‘abandoned’, meaning citizens hang up after waiting in excessive queues or lines are dropped entirely by the system,” the ministry said.
It also said that too much time was wasted on unnecessary calls, urging the public to only phone the 10111 number in an emergency.
“Operators spend a large portion of their limited capacity handling hoax calls, nuisance complaints, and general inquiries.
“This floods the lines and prevents individuals facing life-threatening situations from connecting to available staff.
To deal with call centre staff who were underperforming, police management carried out regular training and instituted disciplinary action where necessary.
“Strict disciplinary procedures are enacted under the Saps discipline regulations where applicable and are followed accordingly.
“The challenge, however, is that the necessary statistics cannot always be retrieved due to limitations in the available systems for tracking accountability.”
