Parliament's security portfolio committee might vote against the police budget next year unless the police stop giving golden handshakes to officers being investigated for crime.
It heard yesterday that a section in the SAPS Act allows national police commissioner Bheki Cele to "discharge" any police officer whose post is abolished, or when it would promote the efficiency and economy of the police.
The jobs of 19 senior police officers had been terminated over the past two years under section 35 of the act - at a cost of R31-million.
"If this trend continues, we will have to find a resolution - whether or not to approve the police budget," committee chairman Sindi Chikunga, of the ANC, told Cele.
The revelations were made when the committee asked Cele why Gauteng crime intelligence boss Joey Mabasa received a golden handshake of R3.5-million, plus an extra six years in pension benefits, though he was being investigated in connection with allegations that he had been involved in the murder of strip club boss Lolly Jackson, and that he had corrupt links to fugitive Czech businessman Radovan Krejcir.
Chikunga said: "I am paying half my salary to SARS but not for this. If I had a way of revolting against it, I would. I can never pay a person who is sitting at home . who by rights should be disciplined, should be fired."
The DA's Dianne Kohler Barnard said she would ask the auditor-general to investigate the legality of the use of section 35 of the SAPS Act "as a "back door" through which to get rid of troublesome police officers.
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