Police watchdog failing to use its budget

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate continues to spend only some of the budget it has been allocated to probe crimes allegedly committed by the police.

Briefing the portfolio committee on police in parliament yesterday, the directorate's chief financial officer, Lindokuhle Cwele, said that, during the first quarter of the year, it had spent just under R33-million of the R196.9-million allocated.

Cwele said the underspending could be attributed largely to weak capacity in the investigations and information management unit of the directorate. This was due to staff vacancies, non-finalisation of job evaluations and a change in the computer software used to maintain the information database.

The acting chief director of investigations and information, Matthews Sesoko, said most of the spending on investigations was going towards operations at national head office level.

Acting committee chair and ANC MP Annelize can Wyk said the filling of posts at provincial level should be the priority and slammed the poor spending of allocated funds: "You cannot come to this committee and say you do not have resources. You cannot do investigations properly if you are not spending where your focus should be, and that is on investigations."

COPE MP Mluleki George criticised the directorate for failing to fill the posts of provincial heads.

"You are answering like politicians. How do you expect these provinces to do their jobs if you are not employing provincial heads? There are too many acting [positions]. It's a culture in this department," he said.

The acting director of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, Koekie Mbeki, said a team had been set up to investigate spending patterns.

More money had been spent in the past on the procurement of goods and services instead of on hiring more employees to strengthen investigative capacity, she said.