SAPS Annual Report 2013: Financial Status & Programme 1: Administration

Meeting report

The Chairperson noted the Committee would be looking at the budget of SAPS and measuring their spending performance. They checked to see whether SAPS had met their goals and evaluated their use of taxpayers’ money. The hope for the day’s meeting was to complete their analysis of Programme 1.

Programme 1 had caused concern amongst the Members around the structure of SAPS and the efficiency of SAPS stations. She noted that management was brought up in the morning’s presentation as a serious concern multiple times, this was despite the fact that during the previous year’s review SAPS told the Committee that their management framework was being worked on.

The Chairperson raised some of the concerns brought up in the morning’s presentations, such as the distribution of equipment to employees and promotions within SAPS. There were accusations of improper promotions being given to employees who were found to be unqualified and ineffective. The slow progress of infrastructure development was a reoccurring problem within SAPS as station building was seemingly always behind schedule. The barracks that house trainees were in a state of disrepair and needed to be fixed.

Ms Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega, SAPS National Commissioner, began the department’s response by introducing the SAPS delegation and reviewing her statement in the Annual Report. She believed that SAPS was continuing to deliver on their constitutional mandate of preventing, combating and investigating crime. SAPS had continued to strive towards this mandate while at the same time deepening their processes of renewal and rebuilding within the organisation. SAPS was changing their approach to crime and was investigating the underlying contributory factors of crime, factors such as alcoholism, drugs, unemployment, and the violent nature of society. If SAPS and their key stakeholders failed to address these factors, they would make no progress in their fight against crime. A need to reorganise and streamline responsibilities within SAPS was noted as being a contributing factor to achieving a higher level of accountability in the organisation. New leaders within SAPS were required to help deliver on their core mandate.

Ms Phiyega stated that integrity was fundamental to SAPS and everything they do. It was impossible for them to fight crime while there were members in their ranks who did not respect the law. SAPS needed to investigate their employees to determine the extent to which members had criminal records, and they needed to validate the academic records of some of their members. This work would be easier once the new Integrity Manager position was filled in early 2014. Discipline was the cornerstone of policing and without it policing would be ineffective. Ms Phiyega stated that during her tenure discipline would increase and individual accountability would be established. A well conceptualised Resource Plan had been formulated to attend to SAPS’s struggling internal processes. This plan included the modernisation of their human resources environment, the modernisation would entail ensuring that hard work was rewarded and there was clear career planning. Professionalism would become a key to the functioning of SAPS.

Ms Phiyega noted that when she took over as the National Commissioner she inherited a strategic plan that focused on ten key areas of performance. These ten key areas had been incorporated into five different programmes. In the majority of these areas SAPS had performed well, but she admitted that some areas still required considerable attention. Many of the problems were capital projects service delivery problems which lay in the difficult working relationship with the Department of Public Works. Efforts being made to implement a service delivery agreement; the challenges between the two departments had reached a ministerial level.

Ms Phiyega said visible policing was of concern to SAPS and they were striving to continue to deliver in this regard. Police operations had led to 1.68 million arrests in 2012/13 which was a 22% increase from the previous year. However SAPS had to continue to focus on the areas with the highest crime rates: KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Western Cape. There were 810 cases of arrestees escaping from custody and the officers and management of these stations needed to be focus on compliance with standards to avoid this. Violence towards police officers was a great concern of SAPS as 84 members were murdered during the previous year.

Ms Phiyega concluded by stating police work was a thankless job, and expressed her gratitude to those working in the field. She thanked the Chairperson and stated that the Committee’s contribution to the discussion on policing in South Africa was greatly appreciated. SAPS was glad to have a committed and knowledgeable Committee to work with.

The Chairperson thanked her for her words and asked them to commence their breakdown of the Annual Report, beginning with the financial statements before moving on to the administrative programme.

SAPS Financial Status for 2012/13
Lieutenant General Stefan Schutte, SAPS CFO, said SAPS had utilised R63.1 billion of their allocated funds, which was 99.6% of the total allocation. There was an unspent amount of R232 million at the end of the year (0.4% of the budget), which was less than the R617 million that went unspent in 2011/12 (1.1%). The under spending was noted as being a result of a delayed procurement process in the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in Programme 3: Detective Services.

One hundred percent of the budget allocated to compensation of employees had been spent, 94.7% of the goods and services budget had been spent. Transfers and subsidies overspent by 14.6% and this was accounted for as a result of increased amount of payments in the civil claims environment. Capital assets had overspent by 13.4%.

Mr Schutte provided some of the departmental receipts; revenue collected for the National Revenue Fund during the year was R342 million and the sales of goods and services by the department totalled R150.3 million. These sales were primarily from firearm licenses and accident reports. Sale of scrap metal and other used goods provided the department with R10.8 million and fines, penalties and forfeits provided a further R22.7 million.

Interest received from corporate banks equalled R0.78 million and the sale of capital assets equalled R2.75 million. The total figure for transactions in assets and liabilities was R165.4 million and local and foreign aid assistance received for the year was R9.68 million, which was in addition to the opening balance of R10 million.

Mr Schutte commenced an overview of spending in each programme. In Programme 1: Administration net under spending was realised as the result of the amount allocated for buildings and other infrastructure not being utilised fully, and goods and services under spending coming from a reduced spending level on network and hosting services. Programme 2: Visible Policing had overspent due to the increase in the price of fuel and oil. Programme 3: Detective Services had spent 101.1% of its budget due to the specific focus placed on enhancing the capacity of SAPS detective services. Programme 4: Crime Intelligence had under spent slightly due to fewer capital purchases made than initially anticipated. Programme 5: Protection and Security Services had under spent slightly due to lower spending levels in compensation of employees.

Discussion
Ms D Kohler-Barnard (DA) began by stating that once again the Committee was being told that SAPS was not achieving its targets, she noted her concern with Integrated Justice System (IJS) and CJS not meeting their targets.

The Chairperson reminded the Committee that the questions should only be related to finances as there would be another question period later. She asked if SAPS could give an indication as to what donor funds were spent on. SAPS reported that they had spent 100% of their allocation for crime intelligence, specifically on salary costs. But the Annual Report states that they had a 16.8% vacancy rate, how was full spending possible with this? She raised the issue of the semi-official fund; she wondered why the unions hadn’t raised the issue with the Committee yet, because it was a large fund. What is SAPS doing to ensure adherence to the rules in regards to this fund? What was the cause in the increase in revenue received from the sale of capital assets? She asked for a further explanation of where virements were going to?

Mr Schutte began his responses by indicating that the contingency liability aspect was a primary principle of the Department of Public Works, but it had emanated from a SAPS initiative.

Before he continued the Chairperson interrupted and reminded Mr Schutte to only answer questions about the finances of SAPS.

He moved towards the question of spending on compensation and salaries that was noted as being at 100% despite a high vacancy rate. Mr Schutte stated that the reason that spending was at 100% was because the vacancies were not funded at the time.

The Chairperson stated that this was part of the larger problem, specifically in Programme 1. The numbers were deceiving; there were too many vacancies to provide 100% compensation spending. The numbers in the Annual Report show the vacancy rate, how could SAPS tell the Committee that they had 100% spending when statistics show otherwise.

Mr Schutte stated that SAPS was engaging in stabilisation and normalisation exercises to try and alleviate issues such as this.

Ms Phiyega stated that SAPS’s normalisation and stabilisation process included three role players. These role players were the Department of Finance, an organisational development body, and human resources. The organisational development aspect meant that SAPS would go to them with a plan and before any finances become involved this body inspects their goals and objectives to ensure that it will help the organisation and determine how many employees will be needed. Ms Phiyega provided the example of establishing the integrity unit; its goals were well established early on and the number of employees was researched. In terms of how human resources would be used in the normalisation and stabilisation process was through establishing communication and determining whether SAPS had the capacity to meet whatever goal they were setting. In the past it was found that they would want 70 positions, but would discover they only had the funding for 11, this was because there was no communication between the necessary parties.

The Chairperson stated that vacant posts were supposed to be determined by how many funded positions were available, not by SAPS’s wish list. Either the vacancy rate presented or the 100% compensation spending figure presented was incorrect. She further asked about the payment of ghost employees. Was this why they had reached 100% spending?

Mr Schutte replied that the 16.8% vacancy rate in Crime Intelligence presented reflected non-funded posts.

The Chairperson stated that the report was not reflecting the truth.

Mr M George (COPE) stated that the biggest problem was now what the 100% represented, how many people were reflected in this percentage?

Mr Schutte stated that the 100% spending represented the actual number of people in service. He went on to say that severance was not the only aspect of a compensation budget.

The Chairperson stated that the Committee wanted to know the vacancy rate at year end so they could have some clarity in that matter and Members would like to know what was budgeted for vacant posts and compensation.

Mr Schutte confirmed that they would provide the information requested the following day and moved onto the questions on donors. He stated that if they deposit a donation they had the ability to extract it the next financial year. In terms of virement expenditures under spending in some programmes was used to fund the overexpenditure in others, except for the final figure of R232 million that remained unspent, which was deposited back to the Treasury.

The Chairperson stated that she understood what he was saying, but it worried her.

Mr George stated that the budget for SAPS was so big that it was easy to abuse. This was evidenced in the juggling of funds to cover over and under expenditure.

The Chairperson noted that Parliament was looking at putting a cap on virements. She cited the transfer in the SAPS budget of R250 million from buildings to compensation of employees as a violation. Section 43 of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) stated that there could be no virement from capital expenditure to compensation of employees.

Mr Schutte responded that the adjustments made were approved by Parliament during the proper budget adjustment period.

The Chairperson asked for clarification on any unspent Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) funds, what happened to them?

Mr Schutte stated that any unspent RDP funds were required to be re-deposited into the RDP fund account, this was to ensure transparency. The next year it could be used again.

The Chairperson suggested that the amount of money SAPS received from auctions could be incorrect as many stations did the auctions independently and their figures might not be honest. She called for a short break, after which SAPS would present their report on the performance of Programme 1.

When they returned Mr D Stubbe (DA) asked why there were only 25 members of SAPS who received performance awards, what were these awards and why was there so few?

Mr Schutte stated that the people who received awards were from the Secretariat.

The Chairperson noted that page 178 of the Annual Report contained the information on performance rewards but gave no indication of what sector the recipient employees worked in. This needed to be corrected in the following year.

Performance of SAPS Programme 1: Administration
Mr Schutte said the purpose of Programme 1: Administration was to develop policy and manage the Department and provide administrative support. The strategic objective of Programme 1 was to regulate the overall management of the Department and provide centralised support services. The Programme was comprise of four sub-programmes; Ministry, Management, Corporate Services, and Office Accommodation.

Ministry spent 86.6% of its allocated budget, management spent at a rate of 95.5% and office management spent 98.2% of its budget. The largest of the four sub-programmes was corporate services which spent R12.6 billion which was 97.7% of the allocated funds. Within corporate services, human resource management provided for R2.6 billion and technology management services spent R2.2 billion. Supply chain management in Programme 1 was a large expense as it accounted for R3 billion of spending.

The presentation moved onto the results of some of the targets they were aiming for. SAPS reached its target in terms of percentage of personnel in terms of the approved establishment, which strived to maintain a minimum workforce of 98%; in actuality they achieved 99.46%. The success of learners declared competent upon completion of training was a large category and achieved their goals as of the 144 298 members who attended training, 129 387 were declared competent, a rate of 90% against a goal of 88%. SAPS sought to achieve an expenditure ratio of 73/27% in terms of compensation expenditure versus operational expenditure for the 2012/13 financial year and their final result was 74/26% which was declared a success.

A total of 7000 firearms were ordered for SAPS in 2012/13 and a total of 7897 were distributed. The extra 7897 were taken from the SAPS buffer stock and meant that they had achieved 12.8% higher than their initial goal. A similar situation resulted in the distribution of bullet resistant vests as 11 593 were ordered and 13 147 were distributed; the additional vests were taken from the SAPS buffer stock resulting in an achievement of 13.4% above their targets. A personnel to vehicle ratio of 4.51 to 1 was targeted for 2012/13 and this ratio was met and improved upon by reducing the ratio by 0.68.

The target for percentage of police facility projects completed as per plan was set at a 95% completion rate. SAPS only achieved a 37.5% overall completion rate which was below their target by 57.5%. This low figure was blamed on the non-performance of contractors and the problems they had with their implementing agent which was the Department of Public Works. The amount of IS/ICT projects completed also fell short of its goal. The intended target was for 70% of IS/ICT annual funded projects to be completed in 2012/13, but SAPS only reached a 61.25% rate. The reasons given for this were that there were procurement irregularities and tender and contracts for some of the new projects were not awarded due to certain dependencies.

Mr Schutte moved on to the personnel management statistics and specifically how SAPS responded to the recommendations of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID). SAPS had responded and implemented 73% of IPID recommendations with the remaining 27% still pending. It was noted that of the 788 recommendations there were 3 duplicates and 1 issue pertaining to metro police which meant the total amount of recommendations made was 784. So overall IPID had made 784 recommendations and SAPS had responded to 569 of them leaving 215 recommendations pending. Of the 215 pending recommendations, provinces reported that 31 were not received and 9 were misdirected, these issues have since been resolved. Of all the recommendations addressed, 133 cases resulted in a guilty verdict leading to the dismissal of 23 members.

The mechanisms in place were discussed and monthly meetings between SAPS and IPID had already been activated. Mandatory sanctioning guidelines were in the process of being finalised and performance standards and turnaround times were communicated to SAPS in order to report the implementation of recommendations with 5 working days of receipt. The HR Committee had dedicated itself to the implementation of IPID recommendations and performance measures had been incorporated with in SAPS to ensure quarterly and annual accountability on the implementation of IPID recommendations. A register had been established to capture and track performance. IPID had raised the issue that the Civilian Secretariat was needed to share information on IPID recommendations with SAPS and that monthly feedback on the extent of implementation needed to be done.

Discussion
The Chairperson recommended that Members ask questions on the section presented before they move onto the next section which was supply chain management.

Ms M Molebatsi (ANC) asked what buffer stock was and about the fact that only 22.8% of Senior Management Service (SMS) members had signed their performance agreements. Why was this figure so low?

Mr V Ndlovu (IFP) asked about the targets related to the police facilities completed in the planned timeframe that were not achieved and the one of the reasons for this being listed as related to working with the Department of Public Works, he asked for clarification and separation of responsibilities in order to better understand why they hadn’t reached their targets.

His second question was related to failed targets on IS/ICT projects, he asked for clarification on why they had not reached their targets as the explanation given in the presentation was not clear. Was there something wrong from the beginning?

Mr P Groenewald (FF+) referenced slides 19 and 20 in his question which were about the percentages of competent learners produced. All achievements were met in this regard, which was contrary to previous reports given to the Committee from other entities which stated that human resources was one of the weakest systems within SAPS. He asked for an explanation as to why SAPS was saying it was not a big problem but others were saying it was.

Mr George asked why there were a high number of cases withdrawn in terms of officers accused of crimes, what was causing people to withdraw their cases?

The Chairperson stated that Mr George’s question was better suited to be answered by IPID. She expressed her concerns that there were far too many mistakes in the report, and many of them were serious. She noted that page 12 referred to the National Commissioner as the Lieutenant General, this was because SAPS had cut and pasted from the previous year’s report, during which the acting National Commissioner was a Lieutenant General. The organogram presented was incorrect as a General was listed as a Deputy National Commissioner. These errors seemed to have been made due to the report being written in a rushed manner. Many departments had handed their presentations in on September 11^th, but SAPS waited until the very end. The Chairperson stated that the spelling and formatting mistakes made in the report negatively affected its credibility. Not to mention they spelled her name wrongly.

She referred to page 72 of the report where they mentioned that crime statistics were in a separate document entitled “An Analysis of the National Crime Statistics”. This report should have been tabled with the Annual Report and since it was not the Committee was not able to engage in the important issues it contained. It was frustrating for the Committee not to have the necessary information available to engage the department.

The Chairperson asked SAPS about the agreement they had signed in terms of public service staff. The Committee sees SAPS unions marching on them because of the agreement. Why did they sign this agreement when there was a clear differentiation between uniformed officers and non-unformed employees? This agreement had serious financial implications, part of the duty of the Committee is to analyse the report and look ahead to future financial implications. With this agreement you have committed Parliament to R2.1 billion without even asking. Please explain this situation to us.

Mr Schutte replied that the buffer stock was a stock of equipment set aside for emergency purposes. All the assets were accounted for and the buffer stock was about 10% of the overall stock, it included arms, vests, uniforms and anything else that SAPS used.

Ms Phiyega continued by stating that public service performance agreements were signed at the end of May. But the SMS police agreements were signed at the end of July and they were at 95% at that point.

She addressed the issue of separation between Department of Public Works (DPW) contracts and litigation.

Mr Schutte stated that there were two processes; one is that part of the budget is given to DPW in order to issue tenders and award contracts. But when those contracts ran into legal problems, the litigation is dealt with by DPW. There was also a portion of the budget which SAPS used to hire contractors themselves and when this was the case it was SAPS problem to handle.

Mr Ndlovu sought clarification by asking if that meant that DPW signs an agreement with a private contractor and SAPS pays DPW for it.

It was clarified that the Department of Police gives DPW a budget based off the plan they provide. If there is trouble with the project it is the responsibility of DPW to handle it.

Ms Phiyega noted that one of the problems with service delivery in terms of IS/ICT projects, which missed their targets, was that the proper people were not in place as many of the leaders in this regard were doing so on an acting basis. She was confident that once posts were filled and established on a permanent basis progress would be more easily attained.

The Chairperson stated that she did not believe that the failure or success of these projects was due to the lack of one leader, it was a recurring problem throughout the years. We want to know what SAPS was going to do to ensure that it does not happen next year.

Ms Phiyega stated that they were working more closely with DPW in order to deliver better and reach their goals and permanent leadership would greatly help them. More monitoring would occur to ensure that projects are being worked on at a station level and contractors are delivering on the work they’ve been hired to do. The process for infrastructure procurement had also been streamlined in order to alleviate backlog and was functioning smoothly. A legal officer had been hired in order to deal with the litigation issues that arise during projects. She hoped that at some point in the future SAPS would have the chance to talk to the Committee about the resource gap they were facing; they were building a great deal and the resources they needed were not always readily available.

She moved onto skills and competent trainees. The professionalising the public service was transversal and of great importance to SAPS and their human resources team was changing and transforming to better serve their mandate. Learning was a continuous process.

The Chairperson interjected and noted that Mr Groenewald was correct in his statement of SAPS presenting different information than the Committee had previously received in regards to competence because the Presidency Department of Monitoring and Evaluation using the Management Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) system had given SAPS management a score of 1, demonstrating that SAPS was not reaching the benchmarks set for competent management and skills.

Ms Phiyega stated that the impact report by the DPME report was the first report on SAPS using the MPAT system and was creating a baseline statistic. Most other departments were receiving similar grades, and she asked the Committee to judge them in that regard the next year after they had received their second MPAT assessment.

The Chairperson said that she would hold SAPS to that statement but that management problems were brought up as being the key issue with SAPS by multiple stakeholders. In the reports from the previous year, management was noted as being a concern. It was impossible to deny this problem when it was a reoccurring problem. Other departments had been assessed multiple times so there were baselines established in the South African government.

Mr Groenewald said that based on the reports of others he did not trust the statistics on competency and skills provided by SAPS. What was he supposed to believe?

Ms Phiyega said that the statistics presented were based off established criteria and took into account all trainees at multiple levels, including information from universities. She noted that statistics about training and skills were not reflective of how someone would perform in their position; there were many other factors that came into play. The translation of skills was very important in someone’s success in SAPS. For 2013/14  new criteria would be added that measured a person’s continued development in order to determine their success. Continuous development was necessary to ensure positive skills translation into the workforce.

The Chairperson noted that the Committee knew that continuous education was necessary as SAPS had stated that last year.

Ms Phiyega said that education within SAPS was constantly evolving and changing to meet the needs of the force. SAPS participated in the MPAT study but believed that some of their assessment criteria were incorrect, such as the posting of minutes online. This could not be achieved in all cases for SAPS due to the sensitive nature of their minutes. This caused SAPS to achieve lower governance scores, but SAPS takes the feedback of the MPAT scores and uses it to better the organisation. The MPAT assessments were a new thing for all departments and the DPME was still working things out with their systems. SAPS was positive their performance would increase as the system matures. Leadership and management were differentiators and SAPS was focusing on localised management in order to improve their service delivery and better the organisation.

Mr Groenewald asked if SAPS was experiencing a lack of skills in any areas and, if yes, what would the percentage be?

Ms Phiyega said that when speaking about skills there would be pockets of excellence and pockets that needed improvement, one area where she would like to see more skills development was the intelligence environment. It was difficult to give a percentage, but SAPS was always looking to increase skills across the board and keep progressing over time.

The Chairperson stated that the Committee wanted SAPS to acknowledge that SAPS biggest asset was people, and they were not being properly managed. SAPS employees needed to be given more direction with their career, as when they exit the academy and join the force, their career plan was murky. She asked what it said about the wellness programmes of SAPS when there were 84 officers killed and a further 150 that committed suicide? SAPS needed to better support its employees and look internally. The Committee agreed with the Commissioner when she said that police work was a thankless job, but there was no thanks coming from management to the frontline employees. She suggested sending management onto the streets to see what it is like to be out there.

Ms Phiyega spoke of the development of the SAPS service delivery plan and there were four key pillars to it. The first of which was focus on employees, from the top to the bottom it was important that SAPS have the right people on board. The second was the physical place, such as the station, stations needed to provide an enabling environment for the employees. The third was the quality of services delivered, SAPS needed to strive for excellence. The final pillar was creating an environment of partnership, working with the community was essential to effective policing. She agreed with the Chairperson that there many issues within SAPS affecting how they operate but they were refocused on correcting them and providing South Africans with a more effective police force.

The Chairperson noted that the frustration of the Committee was that SAPS was 100 years old and always telling the Committee they were on a journey to better serve, but when would this journey yield the effective results SAPS spoke about?

Ms Phiyega said that the discipline of members should not be measured by who was charged with a crime, misconduct was misconduct regardless of charges. SAPS were striving to establish a standardised method of discipline, and there was a great deal of work being done in this regard.

She spoke about the issue of parts of the report being copy and pasted from the previous years and the tardiness of the report in comparison to other departments. The issues raised were noted and they would deal with them. SAPS would establish better editing and ensure that they would strive to submit in a more timely matter and provide the Committee with a copy earlier than they had for 2012/13.

The Chairperson replied that this promise did nothing to help them this year as the errors were already made and should not have been present at all. The report on crime statistics needed to be given to the Committee so they could fully assess SAPS, which was the purpose of the meeting. SAPS needed to table the report before the end of the week so it could be discussed. The decision to separate the crime statistics report from the Annual Report was a problem for the Committee and needed to be reviewed.

Mr Groenewald added that the Committee was required to file a report on SAPS and it was not possible to do so when the crime statistics document was not tabled in Parliament.

The Chairperson asked why Programme 1 was overstaffed by 6.5% in 2012/13 when it was not the core business of SAPS. Furthermore this was double the overstaffed rate of the previous year which was 3.2%.

Ms Phiyega said that it was a result of the normalisation and stabilisation process part of which was determining where people fit best and how many funded and unfunded posts there were.

The Chairperson did not accept this answer lightly and stated that she was worried the upward trend would continue. The normalisation and stabilisation was supposed to alleviate these sorts of problems, but it seems to be increasing them.

Mr Schutte replied that the real results of normalisation and stabilisation would be evident in the 2013/14 Annual Report because it is not a direct effect and the results took time.

The Chairperson said that she felt as though SAPS was avoiding straight answers about this subject and it was of great concern. She expressed frustration with the SAPS delegation using the mistakes of past SAPS administrations as their excuse for important issues and mistakes. There was continuity in management and one person did not make up a department, thus using the excuse of mistakes being made by past administrations was not valid. The current management was not fulfilling the duties that came with their position; they were all long time members of SAPS thus were around for much of the old decisions that were negatively affecting the present day governance of SAPS.

Mr George said that the excuses that SAPS was providing affirmed the thoughts of the stakeholders from earlier in the day; the problems with SAPS lie in the management. They faced little consequences for their transgressions.

The Chairperson brought up one of the IPID recommendations presented by SAPS which stated that the Civilian Secretariat needed to share information on IPID recommendations with SAPS. Should this not be the opposite?

Ms Phiyega said that the IPID recommendations initially go to the Secretariat who shares it with SAPS. She believed it provided engagement between the two bodies.

The Chairperson felt as though the involvement of the Secretariat was not necessary and it just created an extra step in service delivery. The Secretariat was responsible for monitoring the progress of the implementation of the recommendations of IPID; they were not supposed to act as a middle man. This needed to be clarified.

Ms Phiyega said that she would look into this, but the continuation of communication between the office of the National Commissioner and the Civilian Secretariat was very important.

The Chairperson agreed that communication was important between the two offices but their current process was backwards.

It was agreed upon that there was not sufficient time to discuss Supply Chain Management and they would begin the following day’s meetings with that subject instead.

Meeting adjourned.