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The Portfolio Committee on Police has resolved to call the Acting National Police Commissioner, Lt-Gen Lesetja Mothiba, to an urgent meeting in Durban tomorrow (Thursday, 03 August) to respond to challenges related to the lack of vehicles and Nyalas the Committee found at various police stations, public order policing unit and tactical response component.

The meeting will take place during the Committee’s visit to Chatsworth and uMlazi police stations. Tomorrow’s visits will start at 09h00 at Chatsworth police station.

“We find it unacceptable that two out of three police stations we visited over the past two days in Hlabisa and Nongoma are operating at below 50% of the cars they are supposed to have. Today, we learnt that the Public Order Policing unit does not have enough Nyalas and other resources critical for containing public protests. We also learnt that the 50% of the fleet of the Tactical Response Team has been at garages for more than a year,” said Committee Chairperson Mr Francois Beukman.

Mr Beukman said the Committee finds it unacceptable that police stations and specialised units are being hindered from doing their work because their vehicles are kept for long periods at police garages and service providers appointed to fix police cars. “Since we began our visit this past Monday, we’ve been told that vehicles take more than a year to return from respective garages. We need to know where the bottlenecks are, so this situation can be sorted out.”

Mr Beukman said the South African Police Service (SAPS) established a Management Intervention Unit to deal with various challenges in the police service; however the Committee is gravely concerned that such interventions seem not to be yielding any fruits. “We therefore want Lt-Gen Mothiba to respond to these concerns tomorrow.”

The Committee is in Pietermaritzburg, on its third day of the assessment of KZN policing.

Issued by Parliamentary Communication Services on behalf of the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police, Francois Beukman