The Joburg activist who is trying to track down the abused woman she saved has written an open response to the CEO of MTN to make emergency services better, to change the face of abuse support in South Africa!
Pam Green, the Joburg angel, created #SecondChances just over a year ago after she posted a photograph on Social Media, asking anyone to help with a job for a homeless man, this post went viral, and Pam took an opportunity by the horns!
Her goal was to create social upliftment via social media, she uses social media to bring the country’s attention to individuals in need. These individuals go to #SecondChances through recommendations, direct requests, and more frequently, by being tagged on social media platforms.
SEE ALSO: Joburg woman who helped an abused wife is taking on emergency services!
Green is now using social media again… this time to highlight her hope in humanity after she was involved in a tragic experience on the side of the road, involving a woman being abused by her husband, and various forms of emergency services being unresponsive.
Her post went viral and started a massively important online conversation.
“Thank you to each and every single person who read and shared my post. I know it was long and I never in my wildest dreams expected it to go viral?”
Green says she didn’t realise that she was doing something so extraordinary, although she is the person who left her good paying corporate job to help change people’s lives for the better through her Non-Profit organisation ‘Second Chances’.
“But it did, and I’m grateful. But as my post said, I am also traumatized. I’m also exhausted and this lack of sleep is not helping at all.”
Green has been searching for the woman who was abused since Friday, she has posted all over social media but had no luck in tracking her down. The hospital will not give her any information, her phone is off and hasn’t been on since Friday.
They currently have private investigators looking into it and Green is meeting with a brigadier from the South African Police Services today, in the hopes they will come on board to help try trace her.
Meanwhile the post was even seen by MTN CEO Mteto Nyati who responded to Green personally:
“As CEO of MTN South Africa I am shocked to read about your poor experience with us. I apologize to you for this lapse in service. We will use this experience as a learning opportunity to make sure that no other human being goes through it. My apologies once again. I have already initiated an investigation into this matter. Based on our findings, we will take the necessary disciplinary action. The agent involved will be suspended immediately.”
But Green and many online commentators agree that the formal response from the MTN CEO doesn’t actually help either.
“My poor experience shouldn’t be a shock, hundreds of comments on my post are of people who have had the same experiences. You should be used to this. And this is obviously not a lapse in service but rather a real problem that needs serious attention.”
“You commit to suspending or dismissing the agents responsible go immediately. This is NOT what I want. I repeat, do NOT DO THIS!”
“Dismissing these HUMANS will not solve the problem, it will only add more people in the UIF queue, more hungry children, and even more resentment and stress.”
Green goes on to explain that she knows all too well how hard it is to find a paying job. The activist currently has 5 different jobs just to try pay for necessities.
“I know all too well how the pain of having to tell my child that even though he is still hungry, I don’t have money for more food.”
“But I don’t just come with criticism, I come with a solution!”
Green believes that everything happens for a reason, and nothing is coincidence. She truly believes that this is all part of a bigger picture.
You need just look at these details: the timeline, a mere number of days until the 16 days of activism begins. The victim, an abused woman, me, the founder of an organisation called Second Chances, MTN, the biggest network in the country.
So this is her open response to MTN and Mr Nyati:
“I appreciate your personal commitment to making this right.”
“I implore you, as the biggest cellular network, to create a unique and central emergency telephone line solely for victims of abuse.
“I implore you to collaborate with me on this to create a specialised training programme in which call centre agents are properly trained to deal with emergency calls from abuse victims.”
“I implore you to not get rid of the problem, but to be the solution to bring back our humanity”
Let this woman’s abuse story be remembered as the story that changed the face of abuse support in SA!
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Pam Green you place in heaven is booked well in advance! Your selfless deeds do not go unnoticed or supported. Thank you for what you do and for standing up for the poorly trained agent in the call centre. It is sad that many organisations shirk their accountability and lay blame for poor service on the shoulders of their employees when they have failed to provide them with the necessary skills, and then dismiss the employee. This is sad state of many corporate mentalities today.
I pray that more than one cellphone service provider will take your plight to heart and setup trauma call centres.
You truly are an angel of mercy! The world needs more of you. God bless you.
These emergency calls are directed to call centres that are just that, personnel in these calls centres deal with other general enquiries and are not members specifically trained to deal with emergencies and their function is merely to try access the emergency and direct the call to the necessary emergency service. This is a free service offered by the network providers.
Unfortunately what is free is not always the best, there are paid service providers who employ properly trained personnel that specialize in deploying emergency services and following through on the emergency reaction from the time the call is received, to the time the emergency in declared to be under control by the necessary services on scene.
Such services are a paid service but most very affordable like Mobi-Claw
Most help centres are useless because the boss at the top does not care. The boss should at least once a week phone with a problem and experience being sent from pillar to post.