The plan to give pensioners a free set-top box to enable them to receive digital television once the analogue system is turned off will fill many people with fear. They will have visions of the free roof insulation scheme implemented by this same government that led to electrocutions, house fires and a plethora of shonky installation companies doing substandard work.
The same base situation exists. Serving countless thousands of people will require a huge increase in installation numbers and the bottleneck will be the standard of training they receive. They will be installing an electrical device to be used by elderly people who usually do not have advanced knowledge of modern appliances. Misplaced trust in such circumstances could be fatal !
The government should have learned a lesson from the insulation fiasco - but it would be a brave soul who would put their trust in that lesson learned being applicable to this new initiative. Two factors are converging that almost guarantee that rorts will occur.
One is the sheer number of pensioner customers to be serviced - and the other is the limited time for the work to be completed.
It is a fact of life that governments are not very good at implementing mass events which require fine tuning of training - and which must be completed in a limited time. Pensioners accepting this offer will do some with understandable trepidation !
No comments:
Post a Comment