JOBLESS Welsh speakers are being forced to wait twice as long for their benefits to be processed than English-speaking claimants, MPs were told yesterday. Caernarfon MP Hywel Williams claimed unemployed Welsh speakers were being forced to wait up to 14 weeks for their first payments because their applications were being translated THREE times. Mr Williams last night branded the system "ludicrous" and urged ministers, who questioned the figures, to take urgent action. The Plaid Cymru MP said Welsh speaking jobseekers were suffering long delays because staff operating a new phoneline did not have a Welsh script of questions to ask. The CMS system, operated for Job Centre Plus by US computer giant EDS, allows clients to register their details before being called back days later by an official in order to go through their application in full. But when a Welsh-speaking jobseeker calls to apply for benefits, the operators are forced to use an English script and translate the questions into Welsh while they talk. They record the information in Welsh and later translate the replies into English for Job Centre Plus records. The English transcript of the interview is then sent to the Welsh language unit of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to be translated back into Welsh. Mr Williams, Plaid's work spokesman, yesterday lambasted the complicated red tape during a heated debate in the House of Commons. He asked work minister Margaret Hodge: "Is she aware that customers are waiting three weeks for a call back, four further weeks for an interview and that in the case of customers using Welsh they are waiting twice that amount of time because ludicrously the script is not available in Welsh? "Operators are translating the English script in Welsh, talking in Welsh, translating the replies into English for the records and then sending them off to be translated back into Welsh to give to the customers. "This is ludicrous and is not providing Welsh speaking customers with a proper service." Ms Hodge insisted the system had experience "difficult problems" but was now "much better". She said claimants across England and Wales were only waiting on average 1.6 days to be called back. But crucially she did not reveal what this figure was for Welsh speakers. She told MPs: "There are Welsh speaking officials able to respond to Welsh speaking clients right across the whole of our infrastructure across Wales." | 
