R1m for idle
metro police chief
Thursday 16 July 2015 18:07
Mzukisi Solani
Establishment of the Nelson Mandela
Bay metro police force has been delayed for five years, yet its supposed chief
earns almost R1m a year (SABC)
The Nelson Mandela Bay Metro in the
Eastern Cape is accused of wasteful expenditure in employing a metro police
chief with no metro police force to lead.
Pinkie Mathabathe was employed a year ago as the boss of the still non-existent metro police force. The former Tshwane deputy-chief of metro police is reported to be earning almost R1 million a year.
The establishment of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro police force has already been delayed for five years due to budgetary constraints and labour bickering.
Since legislation was promulgated allowing local authorities to establish metropolitan police agencies, five of South Africa's metro municipalities have done so. The establishment of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro police has been on the cards since the council adopted a resolution in 2009.
But the process has been derailed by budget shortfalls and a protracted labour dispute with the trade unions. The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union have raised concerns about the organogram of the proposed police force.
Samwu regional secretary, Mqondisi Nodongwe, says the municipality has traffic services and security services, all whose officials have been trained to be metro police. “If they honestly wanted to form the metro police, they would have diffused those directorates and formed the metro police.”
Very little detail is given on how the planned police force in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro will be structured. According to the unions, the force will be a merger of the municipality's security and traffic departments. Other potential members of the force will be safety and security volunteers, currently unemployed, but working for the municipality on an ad-hoc basis.
Pinkie Mathabathe was employed a year ago as the boss of the still non-existent metro police force. The former Tshwane deputy-chief of metro police is reported to be earning almost R1 million a year.
The establishment of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro police force has already been delayed for five years due to budgetary constraints and labour bickering.
Since legislation was promulgated allowing local authorities to establish metropolitan police agencies, five of South Africa's metro municipalities have done so. The establishment of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro police has been on the cards since the council adopted a resolution in 2009.
But the process has been derailed by budget shortfalls and a protracted labour dispute with the trade unions. The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union have raised concerns about the organogram of the proposed police force.
Samwu regional secretary, Mqondisi Nodongwe, says the municipality has traffic services and security services, all whose officials have been trained to be metro police. “If they honestly wanted to form the metro police, they would have diffused those directorates and formed the metro police.”
Very little detail is given on how the planned police force in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro will be structured. According to the unions, the force will be a merger of the municipality's security and traffic departments. Other potential members of the force will be safety and security volunteers, currently unemployed, but working for the municipality on an ad-hoc basis.
Before you start hiring anybody, you
need to probably get people who've set up these agencies in other metropolitan
areas to come and assist you with that
Nodongwe
says they cannot agree on the establishment of the force, without an approved
organogram. She further says Mathabathe’s appointment was premature and amounts
to wasteful expenditure.
According to Nondongwe, “You cannot continue paying a person a big salary for doing nothing. If that position is not funded for, where does the municipality get the money to pay, yet the same municipality claims that they do not have money to pay more people?”
The Metro is currently facing high levels of gang violence, thus combating localised crime has been identified as a priority and has prompted South Africa's metro's to set aside a considerable portion of their discretionary budget each year to fund municipal police units.
The role of these police units is under scrutiny, with security experts asking whether the expenditure relates to a good return on investment.
According to the Institute for Security Studies' Gareth Newham, a full business plan for such an agency to be developed is needed. “Before you start hiring anybody, you need to probably get people who've set up these agencies in other metropolitan areas to come and assist you with that.
“Those agencies have to really make sure that they have very clear operational strategies about what they're trying to achieve.”
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality was not available for comment despite several attempts to contact it.
According to Nondongwe, “You cannot continue paying a person a big salary for doing nothing. If that position is not funded for, where does the municipality get the money to pay, yet the same municipality claims that they do not have money to pay more people?”
The Metro is currently facing high levels of gang violence, thus combating localised crime has been identified as a priority and has prompted South Africa's metro's to set aside a considerable portion of their discretionary budget each year to fund municipal police units.
The role of these police units is under scrutiny, with security experts asking whether the expenditure relates to a good return on investment.
According to the Institute for Security Studies' Gareth Newham, a full business plan for such an agency to be developed is needed. “Before you start hiring anybody, you need to probably get people who've set up these agencies in other metropolitan areas to come and assist you with that.
“Those agencies have to really make sure that they have very clear operational strategies about what they're trying to achieve.”
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality was not available for comment despite several attempts to contact it.
