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The South African Policing Union would like to express its total support to Police Minister Bheki Cele’s initiative to approach National Treasury for more funding to employ additional police officers. SAPU is in total agreement with Minister Cele that the current workforce in the SAPS is heavily overloaded. The announcement made by Minister Cele in Parliament’s portfolio committee is a welcome relief to the thousands of officers who are already overloaded.

The lack of personnel in the police compromises service delivery. The overloaded personnel are demotivated.  The ratio that an officer deals with is highly abnormal. We would like to commend Minister Cele who seem to be pulling all the correct strings to improve service delivery in the police. SAPU was shocked by the media reports that the government was intending to retrench about 30 000 civil servants. We knew that would not affect the police service as instead of retrenching, the police service has to employ more police officers.

SAPU calls upon the National Treasury to treat the request from Minister Cele with the urgency it deserves. The lack of personnel in the police has reached a crisis stage. We will never overcome the crime crisis in our country if we do not deal with the lack of personnel. We are also calling upon this year’s Matric students to seriously consider the police as an interesting career.

We believe divisions like Detectives, visible policing and Crime Intelligence are some of the most understaffed in the police. It is vital important divisions like these that will make a huge difference in the fight against crime. We need more police officers in our streets. We have to reclaim our hard earned freedom from the criminals through the deployment of additional men and women in blue.

Issued by SAPU