KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas Department of Labor announced Friday that it will extend its call center hours to better help people filing for unemployment.
The expanded hours will allow residents to reach someone until 8 p.m. on weekdays and to get questions answered from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.
However, Kansas residents with a complex case are advised to call during regular business hours.
The Labor Department has paid out more than $1.8 billion in unemployment assistance claims since March 15, but that hasn't stopped a seemingly endless streams of complaints from Kansans who have struggled to file or struggled to receive benefits and struggled to reach anyone who could help.
Those struggles led Kansas to hire Accenture in late June as a consultant to help address the issues plaguing its unemployment system and clear the backlog of benefits requests.
"We've had 40 years of neglect at this agency as it pertains to the IT systems. And unfortunately, those chickens have come home to roost, and this is what we're having to work through right now," Acting Kansas Labor Secretary Ryan Wright said.
Accenture received $388,000 for the initial four-week contract to help with training, technical support, manpower for a new call center and more.
That contract has been extended through the end of the year and will cost taxpayers between $1,893,00 to $2,643,000, depending on how many calls the call center receives, according to documents obtained by 41 Action News.
According to Wright, most of the money will come from federal funds, but it's a clear sign of how underprepared the state was to handle roughly 2 million weekly claims at the onset of the pandemic.
"We're really focused on moving forward," Wright said. "We think we've brought in those resources that are necessary to identify those shortcomings and then have a pretty good solution on how we can move forward so we can make sure we're getting folks paid."
For Kansans seeking unemployment benefits, Wright said claims should now be processed and money distributed in "a matter of day" if all the paperwork is submitted correctly.
Donata Ball, who 41 Action News interviewed in July as someone struggling to reach anyone with the Labor Department, said she eventually received the money she was owed, but it took a long time.
"I finally got the last of my money from the time I filed," Ball said. "It was probably easily 10 weeks by the time I got it."
She has since been hired at a new job and no longer needs the unemployment, but her daughter remains unemployed.
For herdaughter's sake, Ball hopes the Department of Labor really is on the right track.
"For those people waiting on it, I'm not going to hold my breath," she said.
