Durban — The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) said they had had to hire retired detectives on contract basis in order to deal with a case backlog.
Executive director Jennifer Dikeledi Ntlatseng said they were concerned about this issue. She added that their investigators were handling 300 cases at hand.
Touching on the issue of the vacant posts, she said, most people who were resigning were administrators who were leaving because morale was low.
“There are a few posts of investigators available in Ipid. Most cases are of administrators. The administrators feel that the investigators are being paid a lot of money compared to them,” she said.
Ntlatseng added that their budget was not flexible enough to accommodate administrators. Furthermore, she said, they were prioritising the vacant posts.
Chief Financial Officer Patrick Setshedi said the administrators felt that conditions of their colleagues had been improved, while theirs had not.
“One administrator would be hired and the next day we would get a resignation letter of another leaving. This is why there are these vacant posts,” he explained.
Furthermore, when he presented Ipid’s expansion strategy in Parliament, he said they wanted to improve service delivery. He said the establishment of district offices was one of their proactive and innovative responses to building a strong, effective independent and impartial oversight body that processes cases efficiently.
“On the other hand, the establishment of regional and district offices is in the public, ensuring that Ipid is accessible to the public,” he said.
Setshedi said Ipid needed to be independent from using the expertise that they depended on from SAPS and he Department of Health, such as forensic reports including ballistics, DNA, toxicology, post-mortem, among others.
“The gathering and analysis of information should, however, not only be seen in a reaction to the investigation of offences that has already been committed, but must also be expanded to include pro-active information gathering and analysing,” he said.
Setshedi also mentioned that they had to close four district offices due to resource constraints during the 2017/2018 financial year, one of these at Empangeni.
“Efforts made to increase footprints is that within a limited budget we have established offices to nine provincial offices. In addition, a partnership with the Department of Community Safety in provinces has been established and 12 offices were made available to Ipid, in line with sharing of resources.
Currently in KwaZulu-Natal Ipid has one office and 24 investigators.
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