The South African Police Service (SAPS) restructuring process will not result in job losses or massive displacement of personnel, says Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula.
”Moving of skilled personnel will be done with due regard to their field of competence,” he told the National Assembly during debate on his Budget vote on Thursday.
Personnel will be moved within close proximity of their current place of employment, depending on the prioritisation of station precincts.
Nqakula said ”a flatter organisational structure” for the police is needed, rather than the current many layers of command and control. This will result in better service delivery to the people on the ground.
The revised structure will incorporate the advantages of decentralisation of work and authority, along with specialised skills that will be available at station level.
Among other things, the current four policing levels will be reduced to three, namely national, provincial and station level, and there will be redeployment to station level of certain specialised operational policing functions to ensure crimes are investigated where they occurred.
Further, national, provincial and area skilled persons will be moved to stations to increase the leadership, management, decision-making and skills levels at stations to deal with the stations’ unique crime challenges.
Station commissioners will be empowered to render a comprehensive service and effectively manage all resources, and accountability frameworks will be amended to assess the performance of stations and station commissioners effectively in terms of standardised performance indicators.
Nqakula said the revised structure will also ensure that police-community trust is enhanced and will improve the morale of SAPS personnel.
”Government’s intention to establish one-stop service centres will benefit from the changes we are making, as many of the complaints we receive will be attended to at station level without reference to other layers and structures.”
The necessary preparations have been completed for the first phase of the redeployment to start during the last quarter of this year.
Nqakula said the pilot projects started some time ago, to test the effectiveness of clustering police stations for improved command and control and coordination, will soon be rolled out to all provinces.
The strategy will define a process within the clusters where police will unite often in joint projects to deal with cross-station-precinct crime and threats.
The biggest station in the cluster will be the accounting station. A structure at this station will be the supply chain for the needs of the various stations in the cluster.
Some of the specialised units will be shifted to selected accounting stations, including the family violence, child protection and sexual offences units, crime combating units, and members from the serious and violent crime units.
”In all respects, the strategy will be to shift more and better resources to the front, at the coalface of the fight against crime,” he said. — Sapa