Parliament - MPs on Tuesday vowed to summon national police commissioner Riah Phiyega to Parliament over why action was not being taken against station commanders who did not ensure their officers complied with the Domestic Violence Act (DVA).
“There is a new national instruction where there are very strict rules and guidelines.
It’s part of the performance guidelines of station commanders and cluster commanders, so it’s a question of management and leadership,” the chairman of Parliament’s portfolio committee on police, Francois Beukman, told the African News Agency.
“We are very concerned because there must be consequences if the Act is not implemented. There must be action against those station and cluster commanders. We will be calling the national commissioner because we want answers on that issue.”
Beukman was speaking after the committee sent officials from the civilian secretariat for police packing before they could complete a presentation on audits done at 156 police stations to check compliance with the DVA.
MPs were unhappy that the statistical model used was not representative of the country.
“For instance, there’s only one station in KwaZulu-Natal that they’ve visited. At the moment, 25 percent of the population in South Africa resides there. There is a huge number of police stations,” said Beukman.
Beukman said the secretariat would be called back to the committee to ensure the sample used was more representative, and police management would be summoned to account for the low level of compliance with the DVA - almost 17 years after it was enacted.
Of the 156 stations audited, only one (Brooklyn police station, Gauteng) complied fully with the requirements of the DVA.
Close to 90 percent were only partially compliant.
The Western Cape and Gauteng remained the only provinces which fully initiated disciplinary processes against officers who did not comply.
“There’s severe criticism that only Gauteng and the Western Cape are instituting disciplinary steps where police officers are not subscribing to the DVA, so we want to know what’s happening in the other seven provinces,” said Beukman.
ANA