Officers forced to go to Police Day against their will

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has learnt that South African Police Service (SAPS) offices are being forced to attend Friday's Police Day event in Bloemfontein, even though many do not want to. The event is set to take place on Friday.

Officers will be required to sleep two nights on cramped busses and trains, and a list of officers being forced to attend the event was circulated by the national SAPS head office. Officers were told that they could not opt out of the event.

So much for a "morale booster".

We remain concerned that this event will be a waste of time and money, and will potentially put ordinary South Africans at risk, when 50,000 police officers will be forced to leave their stations and travel to Bloemfontein.

Last Sunday, after the Democratic Alliance broke the news that tens of millions of rands were to be spent on this party, the police spokeswoman Nonkululeko Mbatha told the South African Press Association: "the full cost of the event will be released tomorrow". We are still waiting.

Ms. Mbatha also stated: "Yes, there's going to be 50,000 officers in attendance, but does the DA know that we have 188,000 officers in South Africa?" What an extraordinary statement to make - as if taking nearly 30% of the country's uniformed officers off our streets and away from their investigations is somehow a trivial matter. The Constitution provides that the objects of the police service are to prevent, combat and investigate crime, to maintain public order, to protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic and their property, and to uphold and enforce the law. It is completely unclear how Friday's event will aid any of these objectives.

And if morale needs boosting, there are a myriad of ways of doing so. In fact, an alternative measure such as instituting a new performance bonus system, could not only help to boost morale, but also do so while simultaneously improving police performance. It makes no sense to do this at the cost of a minimum of half a million man hours.

We have now had it confirmed to us from multiple sources, including several senior police officials, that those officers travelling from other provinces, will have to travel overnight, and will be forced to sleep on a train or bus, attend the event and then overnight again on public transport. Many of the police officers we spoke to, do not want to attend this event, because they do not think it is worth bearing two days of uncomfortable travel in order to attend a party in Bloemfontein, and because they are concerned about the number of cases that they will have to put on hold to attend this event.

The DA will be posing questions to the minister get to the bottom of this, as soon as the parliamentary questions window reopens.

Statement issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of police, January 27 2010

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter