Scrambling Saps turns to private sector over staggering case backlog

POLICE have hitched their hopes on private sector funds to hire contract employees to make a dent in the staggering backlog of 1.9 million case dockets within the South African Police Service.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu said the backlog would take two years to wipe out as SAPS moves to seek funds from the private sector for contract employees, such as retired detectives.

“We note the under capacity as we speak and therefore we are to ensure the 4500 new intakes as a starting point,” he said.

Mchunu was responding to MK Party MP David Skosana during the oral question session in the National Assembly yesterday on measures taken to fill the detective vacancies and steps the SAPS has taken to resolve the backlog of unresolved cases.

“There are 1.9 million dockets that are outstanding, there is no way to treat them as a normal situation,” he said.

Mchunu also said his ministry does not have the money and was looking for resources to deal with the backlog.

“We hope that this ongoing recruitment, including bringing back former detectives and preventing them from leaving the service, will deal with the backlog.”

While Mchunu said he has not paid attention to the high vacancy rate in the detective services, he said there were issues of attrition, officers leaving the service and remuneration issues.

He said the SAPS will hold a summit in April to bring equity and improve conditions of detectives to encourage them to do more work. 

Pressed by BOSA MP Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster on plans to start reducing the backlog, Mchunu said the situation was untenable.

“We need to employ people on contract to deal with this particular project. It will take us two years if we get the number of people that are estimated, with salaries, vehicles and so on.

“We are trying to find money from the private sector because at the moment we don’t have that money in the budget.”

He said they were engaging the private sector to get the funding to make up for the gap in their finances.

EFF MP Mazwi Blose asked Mchunu about the impact the vacancies in the detective services is having on the SAPS's ability to fulfil its mandate.

Mchunu said it was impossible to match the demand in terms of numbers in all the units.

“That is going to take us time. We increase the numbers depending how far we can go.”

SAPS currently has 153 000 officers and ideally should have 200 000, Mchunu said.

Meanwhile, Mchunu also lamented the ongoing absence of Parliament’s joint standing committee on intelligence, describing it as "untenable" for accountability within the SAPS crime intelligence unit.

“One of the challenges we have is the absence of the joint standing committee on intelligence. This is a huge setback in terms of accountability on ourselves and on crime intelligence,” 

Mchunu said he had interacted with National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza about the joint committee and its role.

“She continues to say people at State Security Agency say they are profiling people who are to serve on that committee.”

He also said it had been more than six months and the joint standing committee had still not been formed.

“I suspect there are problems there,” Mchunu said, adding that the vetting could take up to a year.

“You will realise the harm it is doing to intelligence structures, including crime intelligence,” he said.

It is not the first time there have been delays in vetting members of the joint standing committee, as this process took months to be finalised in the previous parliamentary term.

Mchunu complained that there was a flood of issues to be processed from SAPS Crime Intelligence by the committee.

Mchunu said they did not want to give the impression that they were hiding certain things when responding to questions from the police portfolio committee on crime intelligence on issues that should have been dealt with in a closed meeting of the joint standing committee.

“There are things you cannot put in the National Assembly without the necessary processing. Maybe we should visit the Speaker to put pressure on her so that we normalise matters.”

Cape Times