Crowded center may get some breathing room

Coastal Workforce Center, Conway

By: Thema Ponton | SCNow
Published: January 13, 2009

There may soon be another employment office in the area.

Ted Halley, Executive Director of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission told News13 the Coastal Workforce Center in Conway, which serves all of Horry County, is too crowded and the building and parking lot are too small to accommodate the large crowds.

Area Director Mary Nell Smith said anywhere from 450 to 600 people come into the Coastal Workforce Center every day. Smith said they come to file unemployment claims, get their checks, or look for a job.

But she said with five phone lines ringing non-stop and hundreds of people with sad and frustrating stories, getting to everybody is going to take some time.

"Because of the increase in unemployment claims and we could take anywhere from 600 to 900 claims a week, we have to process those and that's reviewing them, sending employer replies, receiving that information back.” Smith said you can lessen your wait time by filing online, at http://www.sces.org/.

Halley said they are looking at opening another location in Horry County in the North Myrtle Beach. "We try to pile as many as we can, we wrap them around the inside of the building, but still they don't fit, so the only other thing to do is look for another location to lessen the burden and lessen the crowd on that one facility." said Halley.

Smith said she knows some claimants have a difficult time getting through on the phone and they sometimes wait in line for hours just to ask one question, but said her staff is working hard to process claims as soon as they can.

"I could either pull five staff members back and let them answer they phone all day or i can put them out in the resource area to help people and to process the claims, there's just not a simple solution for the mass amount of people that all of the sudden filing dues to the economics." said Smith.

Joel Sawyer, with Governor Mark Sanford’s office said in a statement to News13, "We'll look at any proposal that comes our way, but we have some concerns about opening new facilities when nothing has been done centrally to look at the idea of serving all of South Carolina more efficiently. One of the things we hope the upcoming audit of that agency will uncover are ways to operate more efficiently, so people won't have to spend so much time waiting."

Halley said opening another location is what's best for Horry County in the long run and his office is looking for a building to lease in the North Myrtle Beach area.