Blind Centrelink officer says he was shamed and sacked for slow work

A former Centrelink robodebt compliance officer, who is totally blind, claims he was routinely shamed and later sacked for working too slowly and not meeting the government’s aggressive debt recovery targets.

Brendon Donohue lodged a disability discrimination complaint this week with the Australian Human Rights Commission, alleging he was not provided with accessible systems, equipment and other support to work effectively.

He told Guardian Australia he was regularly singled out on a whiteboard that charted staff performance – the “whiteboard of shame” referred to by whistleblowers in recent reports – as being slower than his colleagues.

“It always came across that I was not necessarily doing good work,” Donohue, who is from Brisbane, said.

“My [disability] dramatically affected those stats on the board. The expectation of the branch was to complete 10 phone calls a day. If you got below the 10 you were deemed to not be performing to a standard that the department thought was good enough.

“One day they called me in. We go in there and they say unfortunately you haven’t met the targets and we’re terminating your employment. Staff were literally only given five minutes to say goodbye. I was led to the lift.

“We had great people at DHS but none of them knew about accessibility. None of the staff were knowledgable about totally blind people and screen readers and braille displays.”

Donohue’s complaint, against job provider Adecco Australia and the department, says he found systems and processes inaccessible, and that some of the department’s computer programs did not work with his screen reader.

“I did not have enough time in the morning to read all the communications I needed to with only 10 minutes start-up time,” the formal complaint says. “[I] missed a lot of very important communications throughout the day relating to my work position.

“A significant part of the job required me to use [the computer program] Genesis, which alerts me to my tasks. This program utilises pop up messages, which are sent from a central scheduling team located in Canberra. I was unable to read these. This meant that someone had to remember to let me know about these tasks, but they rarely remembered until much later in the day.”

The department has an “accessibility team” based in Perth. Donohue said members of the team were often unavailable to assist him during the mornings because of the time difference.

He said the whiteboards tracking staff performance were implemented part-way through his employment with the department, and that their effect was to publicly diminish his work performance in circumstances where he lacked appropriate support.

Related: Homeless woman says Centrelink took entire $3,500 tax return for disputed robodebt

Last week, Nine News revealed the existence of the whiteboards that ranked staff on their ability to finalise calls.

Donohue’s job involved calling people who had been flagged by the department’s computer system – often incorrectly – as owing a debt to the government, and to request details from pay slips verbally.

“I was always in trouble from the department for being too helpful to customers,” he said.

“People often got quite upset that DHS was calling them because supposedly they had a debt and they had no idea what the debt was about.

“We were not provided any information. We were as unprovided with information as what the customers were. We had to figure it out on the phone why we were trying to help the customer.

“I had other challenges, being a blind person being in a compliance role. Blind people don’t get income and asset tested and it was an eye opener for me as to how some of these people were treated.”

The department’s general manager, Hank Jongen, said in a statement that it would consider and respond to any discrimination complaints through the commission.

“The wellbeing of our staff is a priority for us, and we take allegations of discrimination very seriously,” Jongen said.

“We are committed to an accessible and inclusive workplace that builds respect, fosters inclusiveness and promotes diversity, [and] we have a number of strategies and policies in place to attract, recruit and retain staff with disability.”

Jongen said about 500 departmental staff with a disability used assistive technology software.

“We continue to explore new and emerging technologies to remove barriers for staff with an accessibility requirement,” he said.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the department addressed criticisms of its debt collection and workplace practices.

“How the department and the teams use the information contained on the whiteboards has been entirely misrepresented [by previous reporting]. The numbers do not refer to debt targets. The whiteboards are a part of our management process, [which] works by creating visual links between data and people.

“Naming and shaming has nothing to do with our process.”

Donohue said he had struggled to find suitable work, and that his experience was typical for people with disabilities.

“The Australian public service disability employment rate has fallen from 6.6% in 1986 to just 3.7%. The details I have provided above would be why many people with disability are not working in the Australian public service,” his complaint says.

It says Adecco Australia, which advertised for the job and placed Donohue in the department, did not follow through on a promise to contact him about future job opportunities.

He says his employment was assigned to various Adecco team leaders, who were often given no information about his situation or his need to use specialised systems.

“I would have to re-explain everything to them again. Ultimately they did a great thing, they inducted a fully blind person to work in the Department of Human Services. But they did a really awful thing by allowing me to fail.”

Adecco said in a statement it took the welfare and wellbeing of workers seriously.

“We will always address any concerns brought to our attention immediately and work collaboratively with our clients and associates to find solutions.”