Senior police officers were overpaid, the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.
”It seems that President Thabo Mbeki’s 2005 State of the Nation commitment to ‘improve the salaries of members of the police service’ has largely only benefited senior police managers, including National Police Commissioner, Jackie Selebi,” DA spokesperson Roy Jankielsohn said.
He said an analysis of a reply to a parliamentary question on salary scales in the police showed that the police chief’s’ salary jumped from R339 591 in 1999 to R811 000 in 2003 and R904 374 in 2006.
Deputy national commissioners — of whom there are at least four — earned R244 833 in 1999, R629 000 in 2003 and R702 117 in 2006.
Police directors, of whom there were hundreds, earned R187 000, R200 000 and R491 133 respectively, while constables, the ”bobbies on the beat” earned a miserable R40 000 in 1999 and still earned just R55 350 a year.
Jankielsohn said while Selebi’s salary had increased 166%, that of his deputies 187% and that of directors 162%, constables had only seen their pay packets grow 38%.
”Therefore while a constable who is directly in the line of fire of dangerous criminals has to make do with R4 611 per month, Jackie Selebi, who has never actually been a policeman, earns an incredible R75 364 per month. Put another way, Selebi earns in a month three quarters of what a constable earns in an entire year.”
Jankielsohn said ”this extraordinary gap in salaries between the top and the bottom of the pay scale in the [police] must be urgently addressed in order to both attract and retain talented people within the lower ranks of the [police]. It is no wonder that
a number of members of the [police] are increasingly leaving for the private sector.”
The DA spokesperson said the R2,3-billion President Thabo Mbeki committed in 2005 to improving salaries had to be substantially increased.
”It would be less galling that Selebi earned almost as much as the president if he did what he is so handsomely paid to do, namely lead the fight against crime with vigour and professionalism. And for this sum of money, Selebi should be taking responsibility for any bungles in the [police force] instead of placing all the blame on small groups of officers whenever there is a problem,” Jankielsohn said.
Selebi succeeded George Fivaz as police chief in 1999. Prior to that he was director general of the foreign affairs department and South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.
On Thursday Selebi said he was ”furious” at police incompetence in the search for the slain four-year-old grandchild of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe.
”I have never experienced such levels of incompetence before”, Selebi said, vowing to hold to account the police responsible.
Makgabo Bernice Matlala’s body was found hidden under a bed in her home a day after she was thought to have been kidnapped.
Forensic experts reportedly took 27 hours to find the body as they were treating the home of Springs magistrate Stephen Matlala as a rape and kidnap scene and had quarantined the Impala Street, Lenasia South, house to collect evidence to help find a child they thought missing — based on a witness statement.
Makgabo was sleeping at the time of the robbery in which her 57-year-old nanny was blindfolded and gang-raped.
Gauteng police were severely criticised in September last year for their apparently casual treatment of the murder scene of mining magnate Brett Kebble, with many critical comparisons made to the way evidence is handled on hit television crime shows such as CSI (Crime Scene Investigation). – Sapa