Zoe Hunter: Abuse of public service workers in Rotorua and Bay of Plenty is unacceptable

Rotorua InfraCore staff members have faced increasing abuse from the public. Photo / Laura Smith

OPINION

Any abuse, verbal or physical, is unacceptable.

Local Democracy Reporting revealed last week that abuse faced by Rotorua Infracore workers had more than tripled with incidents including verbal and physical threats.

The council contractor maintains the city’s garden beds, provides janitorial services and maintains the wastewater and water supply networks.

It’s a big job, and a tough one. It’s made even harder when people abuse staff. That behaviour is, quite frankly, disgusting.

It comes after NZME revealed in March that aggressive and intimidating behaviour towards Western Bay of Plenty District Council employees had been identified as a key risk factor for ACC claims.

The council’s health, safety and wellbeing lead Clint Boyle said public-facing employees faced the most problems and there had been 11 verbally aggressive encounters - five of them involving threatening behaviour - in six months.

He believed this was linked to “the current state of the world” and people under more pressure at home.

Council chief executive John Holyoake said this sort of bad behaviour had been “normalised” in local government, leading to the impact on staff being underestimated.

He believed it reflected the “stress the world is under”. “Some people see different parts of society as a target for unloading.”

Infracore’s boss Emma Murray also linked public abuse of her staff to wider factors such as the state of the economy.

She said it was averaging five incidents a month relating to public aggression in the first five months of 2023. That compared to seven incidents reported in the whole of 2022, and nine in 2021.

The parks and open spaces, utilities, cleaning and gardening teams were targeted with abuse and threats to assault them or steal equipment.

Both organisations have taken steps to try and protect their staff, such as extra training and reporting systems, but cannot entirely remove the risk.

The Public Service Association (PSA), which represents more than 80,000 workers across the public service, has said council staff often became the face of the council and receive people’s responses - good and bad - to it.

Giving negative feedback is one thing. Outright abuse is quite different.

These workers spend tireless hours in our community making our spaces somewhere for all of us to enjoy and keeping the services we count on operating.

In Infracore’s case, there are people getting up at 3am to sweep the streets and clean the toilets. Imagine doing that and then being yelled at by a stranger.

Public service workers do not deserve to have to put up with threats, abuse or intimidation of any kind.

No matter what state the world is in, everyone has the right to go to work safely.