Johannesburg - MPs will push for the State Security Agency (SSA) to speed up the vetting of five top officials in the Civilian Secretariat for the Police after Parliament was left shocked on discovering that the officials in question have not received security clearance for years.
The alarmed MPs believe the SSA must conduct the vetting of the secretariat’s officials as a matter of urgency as they were operating in a sensitive security-cluster environment.
Members of the portfolio committee on police were left dumfounded that acting head of the Civilian Secretariat for Police, Reneva Fourie, and four other directors have no security clearance.
This was the situation despite them having been at the secretariat for years. The five officials have continued with their work while they were yet to be vetted.
Chairman of the portfolio committee on police Francois Beukman said on Sunday that the members have not yet spoken to the SSA on this matter, but will communicate with the agency this week.
“We’ll have a management meeting of the committee and we will send out an invitation to the State Security Agency,” he said.
The vetting of people in the security cluster was important for the country, he said. Normally, an official would get a security clearance for five years and this would be renewed, said Beukman.
“We must do it because it is critical in terms of the evidence presented by the acting secretary (Fourie) - it hasn’t been done in a number of years.
“It must be prioritised because on the evidence of Fourie, it hampers their work.”
He said the process took time because there were forms that needed to be filled before everything else could be finalised.
While this was a time-consuming process, it was important that it was done, he maintained.
The invitation to the SSA would also help the committee to push for the speeding up of the security clearance of Fourie and her senior colleagues.
The SSA was the Intelligence Department before it changed its name in 2009 to State Security when President Jacob Zuma took over the administration.
Political Bureau