Yaakov Tessler
Yaakov TesslerNoam Revkin Fenton/Flash90

MK Yaakov Tessler (UTJ), who chairs the Knesset's Committee for Public Petitions, turned to representatives of Israel's National Insurance Institute (NII), requesting that they make their services more available for those sectors which do not use technological devices.

In a Monday meeting of the Committee, Tessler said that he "received inquiries from many citizens who do not use digital media and therefore cannot sign up to receive information from the National Insurance Institute, since their personal code is sent via text message, and therefore they cannot receive the required services."

Tessler also requested that NII increase the number of automated information terminals in cities and towns in the periphery, and increase its campaigns providing the general public with information regarding the various rights.

The NII representative noted that in the last few months, there has been an overflow of requests from the public. He added that NII has handled the additional load by recruiting additional employees to staff existing centers and opening new call centers.

He also said that NII has acquired new computerized systems to aid with the management of unemployment requests.

"By June, we received 953,000 unemployment requests, and we've already handled 942,000 of them," he said. "We did this by enlisting all of NII's employees."

Tessler thanked the NII representatives for their comprehensive review of the situation, and reiterated his request to take the initiative to make NII's services and information on rights more easily available to the elderly and to populations which do not use technology.

"We understand well the scope of your work in the past few months, and we thank you for reinforcing the call centers," he said. "Our request is to improve accessibility for the elderly population and for unique populations."

Tessler also said that he would send the Committee an analysis of which cities had the greatest number of residents initiate contact, to allow for a more appropriate response.