Cosatu has turned the shooting of two female traffic officers into a political point-scoring bout with the City of Cape Town by claiming that black officers are not as well trained as their white colleagues.“The white officers in the City of Cape Town all have more training and higher salaries‚ with safer work situations‚” Cosatu charged in a statement on Thursday.The federation said it planned to lay charges against Cape Town Safety and Security head Jean-Pierre Smith and Western Cape Provincial Minister of Transport and Public Works Donald Grant‚ after the wounding of the officers in Khayelitsha earlier this week.But the federation appears to have gotten the basic facts wrong.Smith said the statement made by Cosatu‚ under its Western Cape regional secretary‚ Tony Ehrenreich‚ was factually incorrect‚ emphasising that all traffic officers‚ regardless of race‚ receive the same training.“Every part of Ehrenreich’s letter is inaccurate. The officers who were shot earlier this week were employed by the Western Cape Traffic Department‚ i.e. the provincial government and not in any way linked to the City of Cape Town‚” he said.Cosatu alleged that black officers in the city were under trained and under resourced to do their jobs. The federation said they held Smith and Grant “responsible for the predicament that the black traffic officers and Metro Police are exposed to”.“Black officers must all be provided with firearms to protect themselves from attack‚ or does JP Smith want to put signs on their heads saying they are not armed so please don’t shoot them‚ but still expect police presence to deter criminals‚” said Cosatu.Said an irate Smith in reaction to the statement: “The officers were disarmed by the attackers‚ which means they had firearms and so I have no idea where Ehrenreich gets the idea that they were unarmed.”All metro police‚ traffic and law enforcement staff received the same salaries and management positions were not determined by race‚ he added.“To suggest otherwise is to exhibit intense ignorance of how Council works‚ how labour laws work and about HR policies‚” he said...