Mr. Speaker, thank you. This is in response to a question by Mrs. Marie-Jewell, asked on June 7th regarding problems with contacting maintenance enforcement officers. There's a very heavy workload handled in that program by only three staff members. The program receives a large volume of phone calls daily, which are being handled by the staff throughout the day. Although handling phone calls as they come in is important, it is also important for the staff to devote a good deal of time to the enforcement of files. It is difficult to work on enforcement while constantly taking phone calls.
The administrator of the program decided to conduct a pilot project to see if efficiency could be increased by directing the phone calls to an answering machine during the day and regularly collecting messages and returning phone calls. However, there have been several complaints from members of the public about the phones being connected to answering machines, so the pilot project has been discontinued. Effective immediately, phones will be answered from 8:30 am to 12:00 noon each workday and will be connected to the answering machine from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm each workday. Since the answering machine will still be used for partial days, the toll-free number will be discontinued. A new toll-reversal number will be available for people to call long distance and the charges for these calls will be automatically billed to the program. Thank you.