Independent Complaints Directorate: Strategic Plan & budget 2009/10

Meeting report

Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD): Strategic Plan and Budget 2009-10
Mr Elias Valoyi, Acting Executive Director, Independent Complaints Directorate, highlighted to the Committee that some of the problems that the ICD currently faced had existed since it had started operations. However, ICD was still committed to its vision of ensuring proper police conduct and ensuring the respect of human rights and the rule of law by the police. He emphasised that although all South Africans had a collective responsibility of changing South Africa’s image and restoring public confidence in the policing of the country, ICD appreciated its own profound mandate.

Mr Valoyi stated that the budget for the ICD for the 2008/09 financial year was R98 million. The ICD was able to establish four new offices and aimed to establish offices over the whole county. Its priority for the 2008/09 financial year had also included the establishment of a call centre to enable people to make complaints on a 24-hour basis, although not all funding that it requested for this was received. It also planned to restructure by converting some of the employees to investigators, in order to have more personnel in the field. ICD’s priorities for the next financial year had not changed.

The biggest challenge that the ICD would continue to face was the shortage of personnel.

Mr Valoyi addressed the programmes currently being run by the ICD. These included pro-active oversight, which included conducting cell inspections at police stations, conducting service delivery audits at police stations and conducting research to identify systematic problems with a view to recommending and implementing practical solutions. The ICD would handle complaints, and had experienced a 5% increase on complaints compared to the previous year. Statistics would be compiled. Workshops were also held for stakeholders and research was done.

Ms Elize Verster, Chief Financial Officer, ICD, began her presentation by referring the Committee to page 11, which showed the three policy options ICD had taken to the medium term expenditure committee last year in August, setting out priorities for expenditure for this current financial year. As indicated ICD had required an increase in finance for ICD accessibility as it was aiming to open up 16 more satellite offices. ICD also wanted to enhance its marketing and wanted to upgrade the call centre.  The second policy option included the restructuring and the job evaluation process. The third policy option was the funding of the approved establishment. She highlighted that initially 538 posts were approved for the ICD structure but up to now it had received funding for only 270 posts, so it was looking for funding for this unfunded structure. The following slides, she said, showed the financial implications of the three policy options. Slide 13 indicated what ICD had expected and what it had been advised that it was going to receive for this current financial year - which was a budget of R118 million. However, in January 2009 ICD was then told that the budget was going to be cut and it had instead received R114 million, a budget increase of 14%.

Discussion
Mr M Mokgobi (ANC, Limpopo) asked why there was a reduction in the money allocated to Limpopo and the Northern Cape.

Mr W Faber (DA, Northern Cape) agreed with Mr Mokgobi’s concerns. In addition to his worries about the reduction, he remarked that this reduction directly contradicted the ICD’s stated needs to have more personnel in the largest provinces, because travelling for long periods would be required in order to investigate cases, with more travelling expenses spread between too few investigators. As a result he thought an increase might be more suitable.
 
Ms Verster replied that to understand the reduction she had to refer Members to the previous financial year. In 2008, the Northern Cape and the Limpopo regions had bigger budgets because these provinces were opening new offices. She gave an example of the Northern Cape, which was allocated R6 million, which included the opening up of new offices in Upington, and so took into account the refurbishment costs, installation of computer network systems, telephone systems and other essentials. The budget had then been reduced, once these extraordinary expenses were met, to take into account the normal day-to-day work.

Mr E Chaane (ANC, North West) commented that he thought that the presentation was going to reflect more on performance, because it was important for the ICD to show that it could perform better if there were more staff. This link to performance was required to justify the need for increased staff, as otherwise it could be argues that the ICD was doing a satisfactory job with the resources it currently had. However, he did accept that due to understaffing most of the personnel at ICD were probably multi tasking. This in itself could be a problem; if such a person were working at a government department he or she might be getting paid more to do less. He was of the opinion that these were good motivating factors that the ICD needed to highlight.

Mr Valoyi replied that he agreed that the linking of staff complement with performance was essential and said that ICD had a full presentation covering this issue, which he would gladly make available to the Committee. The presentation also covered their success, the number of cases it had received and where the organisation currently stood.

Mr Chaane asked about the difficulties ICD was facing with the National Department (formerly named Safety and Security) in terms of recruitment, because it seemed that ICD constantly raised this issue to the Department, yet still did not receive funding for the additional staff required.  Moreover, he could tell that ICD was passionate about the issue because the majority of the presentation had dealt with human resources.

Mr Valoyi replied that ICD did not have any problems with the Minister. In fact the Minister was committed to helping the ICD in any way he could, and his office had been fully accessible to the ICD, and some meetings had been held. In addition, on more than one occasion the Minister has asked the ICD to his office to enquire about its activities. ICD was happy with the support it had received so far and hoped that it would continue.

Mr Chaane asked about the profile of staff, in particular whether the ICD had reached its targets of 50% target of women in management and 2% of people with disabilities.

Mr Molepe Matsomela, Programme Manager, ICD replied that at the top management level ICD had managed to fulfil the 50/50 equity target, as there were two males and two females. However, overall, the whole ICD management had 17 management positions, and only five of these were held by women. Other than in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal, the provinces were headed by males, resulting in the final count being some way off the 50/50 target balance. .
Mr Matsomela noted that ICD also employed two disabled persons on the permanent staff, one at the director level and one at a clerk level, and also had two interns who were disabled. He added that ICD was well aware of the challenges in this area, and so had a policy, each time that a post was advertised, of also directing the advertisement to those centres that dealt with disabilities, in order to create more access to the disabled community than would be achieved through general advertising only.

Mr Chaane asked the ICD to provide the Committee with details of the success rates in terms of the complaints it received.

Mr Thomas Tshabalala, Programme Manager, ICD replied that the report Mr Valoyi had referred to contained the requisite information and ICD was going to make it available to the Committee.

Mr M Makhubela (COPE, Limpopo) remarked that since the ICD was concerned about the fact that recommendations to the national office were not being implemented, it should assist the Committee by giving statistics on the numbers of cases where the ICD had made recommendations that were not complied with.

Mr M Lewis (ANC, KwaZulu Natal) asked whether the migration of staff from programme 3 to programme 2 had to do with giving the staff promotions in a structure that had limited upward mobility, or whether it was aimed at development of staff capacity.
 
Mr Tshabalala replied that this migration was effected to assist the ICD with one of its critical programmes, which was investigation. ICD had identified individuals in programme 3 who had good qualifications - for example, law qualifications, or diplomas in policing – and who, in addition, were able to take statements from complainants. They were seen as the ideal candidates to strengthen the programme with minimal new training required. ICD already had a learnership programme in place, and by 2010 the individuals in the current programme would be fully-fledged investigators. This was one of the reasons ICD was pushing for funding for the restructuring programme, since once these people joined the ranks of investigators, the ICD would be obliged to offer the rewards and perks that were appropriate to their advancement.

Mr Lewis was interested in the qualifications required by the ICD, especially the qualifications for investigators. He asked whether staff needed to be legally-trained, former members of the police force or have studied criminology, and also enquired what type of people ICD was hoping to attract in its recruitment.
 
Mr Tshabalala replied that ICD did not require any one specific skill for appointment as an investigator, and in fact had an array of qualifications. Some of the investigators had come from the police, with investigative experience; some came from the prosecutors’ office; others had law degrees; and some were former lawyers or legal advisors.  The mix of qualifications worked very well and this blending was crucial because the same people had to work together in teams in some cases.
 
Mr Lewis asked about the access of the ICD to communities, especially when it came to placing complaints. He gave an example of people in his constituency who were close to the Lesotho border, and asked whether they should place a complaint at the nearest police station, or would have to travel to Durban, which was a costly exercise.

Mr Tshabalala replied that complaints had to be lodged in person at an ICD office in the nine provinces, or at one of the six satellite offices. If a complainant was unable to do, then the complaint must be put in writing and forwarded to the ICD. A person who wanted to report a complaint in an area with no ICD office therefore had to go to his or her nearest provincial office. ICD was aware of the problems such as travelling expenses and time spent from in moving from one area to another, and so it would be ideal for the ICD to increase its accessibility. He argued that this would not only help the community at large but it would also be beneficial to ICD, because easier access meant that it would be able to respond to complaints in shorter periods of time. It also meant that the ICD would be able to cut down on expenditure.

Mr D Bloem (COPE, Free State) agreed with Ms Verster that the ICD budget was a matter of serious concern. He said that the Secretariat had a bigger budget than the ICD, although the ICD was one of the crucial structures in South Africa, having been created to deal with complaints and problems of police assault or malpractice. He felt very strongly on this point. He emphasised the closing of structures that had been created but never put to proper use, which was a waste of taxpayer’s money. He also found it very worrying that when a complaint was made, was investigated and the ICD made a recommendation, the police would ignore the recommendation. He was of the opinion that the Minister should be taken to task about this, and he was very happy that he was coming in to visit the Committee the following Tuesday, so that the Committee could advise him of this serious issue that needed to be redressed.

The Chairperson asked who apprehended the police that were under investigation.

Mr Tshabalala replied that ICD officials had the power to effect arrest on their own, but in the majority of cases they communicated to the station commander that they had a case against a certain member, and had a warrant of arrest. Even without a warrant of arrest, the officials from ICD were still able to request  - and in fact oblige -the station commander to render assistance to the ICD.
 
The Chairperson asked if ICD had access to resources that helped with investigations, such as police helicopters, since it was complaining about the difficulties it experienced in doing its job effectively over the expanse of the larger provinces.

Mr Matsomela replied that ICD did not have access to police resources such as helicopters at all, and had not even dreamt of requesting such resources.  However, there were other outside resources, not owned by the ICD, where it had to rely on the police for assistance, such as forensic laboratories. One drawback was that ICD, like everyone else, had to queue for results, unless it was involved in a high profile case, in which case the National Director of Public Prosecutions would intervene and try to have the case dealt with as an emergency matter.

Mr M Mokgobi (ANC, Limpopo) asked why the ICD offices were situated in big towns, as evidenced by the ICD’s current move from King William’s town to East London.

Mr Tshabalala replied that he was glad that the Committee had raised the issue of the ICD location. The move from King William’s Town had been because of an acute shortage of space. ICD did not have formal offices, but was working from a house since it had started. When ICD grew this was no longer an ideal situation. ICD should have moved two years ago but, despite advertising for office space, had been unable to find anything in King William’s Town. It had found suitable office space in East London, which was regarded as a central hub of commercial activity, including shopping, for most of the surrounding communities.

Mr Faber did not feel that the police should be asked to assist the ICD, as this might have the effect of decreasing the public’s faith in ICD as they would naturally question whether an investigation could be effective if the department being investigated was also assisting the investigative structure. The ICD’s independence could also be called into question.

The meeting was adjourned.