Despite a R7.8 billion injection from National Treasury for SAPS to hire an additional 5 000 trainees a year, but concerns remains in the Western Cape over the low numbers of police officers.
This week the Western Cape’s Police Oversight Department released the latest Policing Needs and Priorities Report for the 2021/2022 financial year that highlighted that the number of police employed in the province continued to decline.
It found that although SAPS-funded posts in the province was 21 267, there were only 18 867 employees as of March 2022.
“Above this, police officers decreased to 15 730 last year from 16 240 in 2021. The 1 118 new recruits announced in December will assist in our capacity, but the vacancy rate is still a concern,” said the DA in response to the report.
MEC Reagen Allen said the report highlighted the decreasing number of officers and lack of physical resources.
“It confirms what we see whenever we visit police stations across the province. Dedicated men and women in blue are left to fend for themselves and the various communities they have to keep safe,” he said.
Allen added that the government should ensure officers have the necessary resources and equipment to fulfil their duties.
“One manner in which this issue can be addressed is by immediately reviewing and amending the formula that is used by national SAPS to allocate SAPS deployments at station levels.
“It cannot be acceptable that SAPS in Khayelitsha – and so many other areas across the Western Cape – continue to be under-resourced. Khayelitsha’s police-to-population-ratio is one officer for every 628 residents. In Harare it is 1:879 and Lingelethu West, 1:664. The provincial average is 1:378,” he said.
The department highlighted that a common complaint in all areas was that SAPS does not have sufficient resources to carry out its functions.
“Although several stations received additional human resources during the 2015/16 financial year, there continued to be a shortage of police officials at several police stations. High levels of absenteeism and heavy workloads impact negatively on service delivery.
“In some rural areas, seasonal influxes of people and the long distances between areas hinder effective policing. In 2018/19 most respondents indicated that there was still a shortage of human and physical resources at SAPS (personnel, vehicles, office space, holding cells),” the report said.
The report also highlighted that of the 38 police stations inspected, only 31.6% of them had access control points, with a further 26.3% having no holding cells and 10.5% did not have any detention facilities.
Crime expert, Eldred de Klerk said the thinking about equating police effectiveness to a high number of police officers needed to shift.
“Effectiveness depends on the deployment of police in a way that optimises police working together with others.
“We got to do better than that, in our analysis, and it’s also political at this point.
“We need to look at flattening the police structure to free up capital, resources in the police which will allow us to train additional officers.
“We need to train them for policing in the 21st century,” he said.
Provincial Community Policing Forum (CPF) board chairperson, Fransina Lukas said it was high time that the recommendations of similar reports be prioritised.
“It is time to implement the plans, I see that the MEC has made nice recommendations as he had made promises to us.
“We are yet to see the empowerment, the resourcing and capacity of the CPF. We hope that the national government will include us in the budget allocation,” she said.
The department has given provincial Police Commissioner, Major General Thembisile Patekile until March 7 to respond to the report.
Western Cape police spokesperson, Brigadier Novela Potelwa said they were in the process of formulating a response.
“The SAPS in the Western Cape is in the process of finalising a detailed response to the 2021/2022 Western Cape Policing Needs and Priorities Report.
“Upon finalisation, the detailed response will be tabled before the relevant authority. It would, therefore, be inadvisable to use extracts from the SAPS detailed response to reply to media queries about the policing needs and priorities.
“The risk associated with that is missing context and detail that the full SAPS response seeks to provide. Once the detailed response is presented to the Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety, it will be made available to the media,” Potelwa said.
Weekend Argus