3000 Nav employees exposed to threats or violence

NAV Grorud Photo: Erlend Aas / NTB scanpixNAV Grorud Photo: Erlend Aas / NTB scanpix

Around 3,000 employees of Nav says that they were subjected to violence or intimidation at work during the previous year.

In Nav`s own system  in 2015  2,444 incidents of violence or threats thereof against employees were recorded in 2015. That’s an increase of 223 incidents compared to the previous year.

The number of events has increased in almost all of the categories; likeverbal abuse, harassment / harassment and threat / intimidation. The exception is physical attacks, where 48 episodes were recorded both in 2014 and 2015 , according to the radio channel P4.

3000 is scarily many, says Joint Organization (FO) which organizes many of the employees.

– There are too many, says union leader Mimmi Kvisvik to P4 and states that he thinks the understaffing is one explanation for the high numbers.

– Much of the frustration comes from not people not being able to get in touch with their caseworker,  not getting answers to their questionsor not getting answers to their applications. I mean Nav\s front-line service should have been better staffed and been closer to the individual, says Kvisvik.

Nav management believes the increase is mainly attributable to a lowered  threshold for registering events, rather than that  being a real increase. They also point out that the percentage of people in the agency experiencing intimidation and violence is decreasing.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today