The National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa will not be compromised by a reduced car pool, said Makhosini Nkosi, the unit’s spokesperson, on Sunday.
He was reacting to reports in the media that the unit was in debt to the Imperial Fleet Hire vehicle rental company.
”Our contract expired with the service provider. Naturally, when your contract expires you return the cars as they don’t belong to you,” said Nkosi, dismissing the media reports as sensationalist and irresponsible.
He said the contract would not be renewed because it had been decided that renting cars was not an intelligent option. The unit will now purchase vehicles.
”We are in the process of buying new cars and are trying to find economical, reliable cars that will be cost effective. We do have the money to buy these cars.”
Nkosi said the NPA, also known as the Scorpions, may well owe money to the rental company.
”Before you pay for a service you want to satisfy yourself that the service has been provided. Of course if we owe them that money we will pay it. It has to be established if we owe them what they say we owe them,” he said.
Reports that budget cuts were creating huge problems for the Scorpions was also dismissed by Nkosi.
He said this had in no way compromised their operations and investigations.
”This just means you cannot live your life the way you were living before, you have to make adjustments. We can sacrifice on certain things like telephone and travelling expenses.”
A Sunday newspaper quoted an anonymous member of the Scorpions as saying that there were too few cars and members were using their own cars and paying for petrol themselves out of sheer desperation.
Nkosi said a shortage of cars had not thrown the organisation into chaos.
”People may be used to having cars and now feel inconvenienced but our operations are not being compromised, which is more important than our people having cars,” he said.
He explained that the Scorpions were not a quick-response law enforcement agency that would necessarily need a pool of cars on the spur of the moment.
”We are pro-active, we sit and plan an operation.
”Then we decide what resources we need to amass for that operation.” – Sapa