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The South African Policing Union would like to express its shock, dismay and anger at the reckless reports about possible retrenchments of about 3000 police officers. This is totally unacceptable and we will fight those retrenchments until the last man standing.

We find strange that politicians will consider let alone decide to retrench a police service that is already falling short in terms of personnel. A typical example is public order policing unit that is falling short with tens of officers in demand. SAPU is of the view that the governing party should consider retrenching a large number from the executive authority.

The country's national executive is very bloated. We have never seen a third world country like ours with so many cabinet ministers and deputy ministers.

It is this bloated cabinet that we sometimes read in the press about infighting between ministers and their deputies because most of them have nothing to do. Instead of retrenching police officers who are doing an overload of work the government need to employ more officers. If there is a need to cut on personnel, the axe should fall on the cabinet that we think is just an employment agency for cadre deployments to enjoy the gravy train.

SAPU is totally opposed to this planned retrenchment. It is also an insult to the bargaining chamber as this has never been tabled for negotiations. It seems as if the politicians are looking for soft targets to score cheap political points. We will never agree to this madness.

Issued by SAPU