Police top brass blasted
Fobbed off parliament with a 'cut and paste job'
Mar 22, 2011 9:11 PM | By CAIPHUS KGOSANA
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and national police commissioner Bheki Cele were savaged by MPs yesterday for failing to present coherent strategy and performance plans to parliament.
Police parliamentary portfolio committee chair man Cindy Chikunga stopped just short of sending the police delegation - which included senior deputy commissioners - packing for what she said was their repeated failure to provide documents the committee had asked for on time.
She blasted Mthethwa during the morning session, saying: "The department cannot make us work like this. It cannot afford to make the portfolio committee work like it is in crisis. I think I am deeply hurt and extremely frustrated."
When Cele made his hasty presentation of his proposed strategy. Chikunga described it as a "cut and paste" job based on the plan presented to the committee last year.
The police have been told to try again and present their plans again on Tuesday.
Chikunga's tongue-lashing of Cele and Mthethwa follows a workshop in February for parliamentary committee chairmen at which the chairmen were told by ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga and deputy speaker Nomaindia Mfeketo that they should treat ministers, their deputies and their directors-general with respect.
But some committee chairmen rebelled, saying they merited more respect from government officials and ministers.
At the beginning of yesterday's session, Chikunga said the police's strategic plan for 2011/2012, and the performance plan, were to have been presented to the portfolio committee on March 9 but the ministry had asked for a postponement because the plans were not ready.
The request was granted.
Chikunga said yesterday that it was "unacceptable" that the ministry was still not ready when it had been given ample time. She said she was forced to phone senior police managers, including Cele, on Friday, when the committee secretary told her that the documents they had asked for had not been supplied, and that MPs would not have time to read them and prepare for the meeting.
Mthethwa promised to investigate "urgently" the causes of the delay.
"We have no alternative but to get back to the drawing board and see to the functioning of our machinery. There has to be some explanation and I definitely will be following up with the administration," the minister said.
During his presentation, Cele quoted from the documents, saying the police would intensify the fight against crime by putting more officers on the beat, increasing their numbers to 200000, and by beefing up crime intelligence and other crucial units that, he said, had significantly reduced crime, including bank and mall robberies, and cash-in-transit heists.
Chikunga said the plan lacked the detail required by the portfolio committee. It did not set out clear and measurable objectives, expected outcomes, progress outputs, performance indicators or targets.
ANC MP Greg Schneemann also bemoaned the lack of detail in the document, saying the strategic and performance plans presented last year were full of crucial detail that was missing this time around.
"If I look at the performance plan we have been given this year, we have got no targets so it's very difficult to measure the performance plan," he said.
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard accused the police top brass of "treating the committee with contempt".
"I am not pleased with what has happened today. I feel as though this portfolio committee is being treated with contempt, and I don't like it. I don't like the way we are simply expected to sit back and get what's given to us," she said.
"It's not acceptable because we have oversight over this ministry."
Chikunga told Cele that her portfolio committee should have sent him and his delegation packing for its failure to prepare for the meeting but she was mindful of the money they had spent travelling to Cape Town from Pretoria.
Cele said it was regrettable that the documents had not been submitted on time, adding that he would ask his senior managers for an explanation.
