Independent Complaints Directorate on Strategic Plan: briefing

SELECT COMMITTEE ON SECURITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
21 May 2007
INDEPENDENT COMPLAINTS DIRECTORATE ON STRATEGIC PLAN: BRIEFING

Chairperson:  Kgoshi L Mokoena

Documents handed out:
ICD presentation
Department of Safety and Security’s presentatoin on Budget Vote 23

Audio Recording of the Meetings: Part1 & Part2

SUMMARY
The presentation by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) was done according to the 3 different programmes that they have. The first being administration, programme 2 investigations, the third being information management system and financial statements. The members posed questions after the presentation and recommendations to the ICD. There was not enough time to entertain all the questions and the committee hoped that they would have the opportunity to do so in future when they interact with ICD. Some of the issues raised at the presentation was the shortage of staff. Also the marketing was poor since ICD was inaccessible as most people do not know about their services.

MINUTES
The chairperson welcomed everyone and gave opportunity to Mr. P. Mongwe (Acting Executive Director) of ICD to give a presentation they have prepared. Mr Mange mentioned that he would give his colleagues to present on their specific programmes. He mentioned that ICD would be celebrating its decade existence and would use this opportunity to market them, as they seem inaccessible to the public. They understand that access is a problem; hence they want to have satellite offices so that they are more visible. They are not accessible in the rural areas and this is something they have taken note of, as a result have implemented to satellite offices of which one is based at Umtata. Due to issue of capacity they have decided to do an audit of expertise. They thought of converting their staff with legal qualifications, to train them and be investigators. ICD has decided there was a decline of death in the custody of police, however there were some provinces which had increased such as KZN and the Western Cape. They are aware of the issue of Domestic Violence (DVA) they want to be proactive in this issue by breaking the silence. They want to come with a proper research report and compile a manual which will be a tool used by the investigative officers.

Mr. E. Valoyi(Administration Programme Manager) presented the administrative program 1. He mentioned that slide 7 on staff complement, showed the distribution of personnel and staff. The initial number of positions for ICD was supposed to be 535 of which they have not reached half of that, because they only have 248 employees. Three issues the Auditor General (AG) raised, the SCM policy, they had to adjust their policies which were in existence then. He said that the AG raised issues about leave and those had to be looked at, and how these were captured at the provincial offices. AG also raised the issue of Human Resource Plan. They have job evaluation to make sure that they do not overload people and if the work is more then they would compensate the staff members for that. They have a problem of not being able to retain talent, this could be due to the fact that there is no room for internal growth. They are trying to do what they can as the department to motivate people and also they are overworked. They have an internship programme in place which helps them to help with the overworked staff, compromised service delivery.

Mr. Tshabalala, (Investigations Programme Manager) stated that his programme is one of the challenging programmes in the department. They had to revise their strategic objectives because before they were too high and made it impossible for them to achieve which was also due t the budget they had. The performance which they had, they exceeded the target by 35.7% and did not meet the target for finalised internal ICD investigations. The reason they had not presented the whole picture of financial year was due to the fact that they are verifying and so just presented for 11 months. Limpopo has finalised they bulk of their backlog cases. They have had a gradual increase of investigators, and complaints were ranging from 5500 to 6000. Backlog represented the cases that were not finalised ranging from 2004/5 financial year. They did not get the corresponding capacity to deal with the new project and it backfired on the backlog. They went to the provinces and tried to find out where the problem was, they found out there was no uniformity within the provinces which was one of the challenges and are now looking at those closely.

 Mr Tshabalala further noted that 8671 cases have been closed for the financial year 2006/07.of the closed cases, 57% had been resolved. The unsubstantiated cases where the ones where there is no substance to collaborate allegations. Some cases were dismissed due to complainants not following up on their cases as they showed no further interests. ICD has been able to attend to scenes about 71% of the time. The reason for 29% they could not be able to attend was due to the distance. (Eg. ICD office in Bellville and incident happens at Oudtshoorn, it would be impossible for them to make it there in time and by the time they get there maybe evidence would have been tempered with). This was one of the challenges raised and ICD was hoping they would address them soon by getting satellite offices. They have sent recommendations after their investigations, to SAPS and DPP but the challenge would be what those relevant stakeholders do with those recommendations as ICD does not have control over that. He also mentioned that members that abuse their power do not have a place in the SAPS.  Their project on Durban metro police is almost at end.

Ms. N. Sihlezana began by stating that they are working under limited resources and this is a challenge for marketing and research. She mentioned that there was a research report with saps and they have found that the death has decreased generally although still high in 3 provinces. They were now thinking of doing some more research to look at why their recommendations are not honoured and try to rectify that. She mentioned that compliance would be informed via sms as a means of improving their communication She further noted that the statistics they have serves to give an indication of where they are on their provisional figures, however she mentioned these were provisional statistics as they still have to verify with the SAPS. There has been a general decrease in the number of cases, reported to the ICD and misconduct cases seem to be the highest. She further mentioned that death as a result of police action has increased which raises concerns on ICD. They have conducted workshops to assist the police in terms of crowd management which they believed had worked as there was a decrease in death of innocent victims.


Ms. E Vester (Chief  Financial Officer) mentioned that they have used 99.04% of their budget. She also stated that they built the satellite office equipment with their reserved money which came from the unused salaries. Ms. Vester said that on slide 73, transport, travel and subsistence per office also included accommodation and expenditure. She mentioned that foreign trips were not funded for by the department; however, they gave them foreign daily allowance.  The financial side of things did not go well and were told by the AG to clear the suspense account as they had too much money on that account. She further stated that they do not have a debtors section and were facing challenges in terms of tracking their debtors. The reason for the debts was due to the provinces not notifying them in time when the employees have resigned and so they pay them although no longer working for them. They currently have 80 million for this financial year and 7 million would have to go to the official accommodation.

The chairperson thanked the members of ICD for their presentations and asked he gave opportunity to the members to ask questions.  He stated that it was interesting how the police officers locked up a woman in male cells and their reasoning being the civil union bill, not sure whether to lock her with man and needed more explanation on this.

Ms Nyanda asked whether or not the police were suspended with pay. She also wanted to know how many officers were suspended and how many were reinstated later. She also wanted to know how many were charged for fraud, were there cases reminded and police not informed. She further asked if the people were told in time when these cases were taking place. She enquired about the commissioner that was shot on duty and what happened to that case. At Vaalbank there were accidents that occurred in 3 months consecutively she concurred and asked if ICD got that report and if not why. She then wanted to know which criteria were used by the ICD on recruiting their interns.

Mr Worth thanked the department for the briefing but mentioned that he was disappointed that in the budget they did not accommodate for the toll-free number which they had mentioned as a means of improving communication means, between the public and ICD. He also referred to the lack of staff that ICD had and wanted to find out whether or not they would be able to carryout their work effectively. He also wanted to know how long it would take to recruit the other two hundred staff that they needed. On slide 17 he does not understand the figures on the backlog and mentioned that they were quite high.

Mr Moseki also thanked the department on their detailed briefing. He was more concerned on the threat structure, on the staff leaving for upward mobility and wanted a clear picture on ICD’s retention strategy. He also wanted to know the milestones that they can communicate the nature of the misconduct. Also the domestic violence committed by the officers and wanted to know if they were researching the cause of that problem. He also wanted to find out at what point did ICD intend to complete their research. He asked if there were other stakeholders or rather role players that ICD was involved with other than SAPS.

Mr. Le Roux wanted to know who does the research and what other types of research do they get involved in other than death. Where does this research land up and how does it benefit the public. He also wanted to know if they were up to date with the asset register. He reflected on their 10-year celebration and wanted to know how much it would cost them and where have they budgeted for it because it did not appear on the budget.

Dr. Van Heerding asked about the inspections and station audits. He referred to slide 62 and wanted to know the purpose of cell inspections. He was concerned about police custody for petty offences and that the police were not using their authority to give police bail, he wanted to know if ICD investigates such cases and what powers they had to convince the police to grant bail. He wanted to know the position when a particular ICD recommends a particular case to be charged for murder and prosecution does something else, where there is a difference of opinion between the two and what steps were taken to reach an agreement.

Mr. Mack mentioned that the relationship between SAPS and ICD has not been good in the past and wanted to know what would be done to improve that relationship especially with the shortage of personnel that ICD is faced with. He said that he does not see IDC growing at the same rate as SAPS and wanted to know how they would make sure that they do grow. He wanted to know how satellite stations were being allocated so that they cover rural areas. He also asked the administration why there were acquittals. He also touched on the cover ups of the police and the tempering of evidence, which he feels, were not mentioned. He suggested that ICD should use the police stations to do their marketing as they are also about service delivery. He also wanted to know how severe the injuries were. He said that he would like to see more focus on each province and the specific criminal conduct, eg. Western Cape, Drugs.

Mr. Shiceka mentioned that ICD has a weak marketing strategy. He also mentioned that he did not hear them talk about Community Police Service (CPS) in terms of relations and he suggested that they re evaluate and look to whom they report to when it matters most. They should build their profile as ICD, he also mentioned that how the police respond to someone who says they are gay and would prefer to be put in another cell and suggested this is something that ICD should look at. He also said that ICD cannot use the police as dependant resources yet they are investigating them, and suggested that they look at what matters most so that crimes are reduced. He also suggested that ICD should report to the committee so that it can assist them by talking to management of police that report to committee so that they all work towards the same goal.

Mr. Filaing asked about the inspector in Northern Cape. Are there external or extra budget to shortfalls of staff and missing firearms.

The chairperson also congratulated the department on their job well done under challenging circumstance and mentioned that ICD has to be capacitated. He stated that they were doing a lot of things that were not visible to the public and wanted to know what they were doing to improve that. He also wanted to know what would be done to remove this cover up amongst the police. He also quoted what Ms. Sihlezana said that the ICD services are expensive and mentioned that this limits other people form this service and as they mentioned that in other cases there was no follow up, what did that imply. He said that this should be reviewed because ICD cannot say that if complainants do not follow up then their cases would be dismissed. He also touched on the stats as was mentioned by the presenter and that they were provisional and asked why the ICD gave the committee unverified stats as these are usually kept in the archive, they cannot have unverified stats. He also said that the police are moonlighting because they state that they are not getting enough and that should also be looked at. He suggested that there should be a crime intelligence unit. He needed clarity on distance and what they really mean when they say they cannot attend to other cases because they are from their office base. He also noted that ICD showed the AG complaints and wanted to know what mechanisms they put in place so that they could rectify some of these issues. He also asked about debts that were written off and why the department was not able to track them. He also wanted to know what the committee  could do to help ICD so that they are not at the mercy of the police.

Mr. Moseki asked if the members of the ICD were being investigated. He also wanted to know about the recommendations the department makes to the police which are not implemented and what ICD does about that.

The chairperson gave the opportunity to Mr Mongwe and his team to respond to the questions.

Mr Mogwe