ANA reports that MPs heard on Wednesday that the SA Police Service (SAPS) has enough budget for equipping its public order policing unit, but is still operating at 50% below the ideal number of members.  

General Elias Mawela, who was briefing the portfolio committee on police, said:  “The public order policing is not at the level at which it was supposed to be, because according to our work study investigation we wanted to see ourselves standing at the ideal figure of 12,779 in order to be operating at the ideal figure.  But currently we are sitting at 5,600 members, so we are actually operating at below 50 percent…”  He added that since last year an allocation had been afforded to try to increase numbers “because we know that crime management is the game of numbers, if you don’t have numbers, members will operate as individual police.”  He said in regard to procurement of physical resources that the SAPS was on course and that in the last financial year they had managed to get more vehicles for public order policing.  The only area said to be lagging behind was procurement of protective gear for the unit’s members.

• Read this report in full at The Citizen

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