Cape Town - According to Thando Dyamara, 28, he was hindered from applying for jobs as police gave him an expired police clearance certificate (PCC).
Dyamara, from Khayelitsha, who recently graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), alleged that poor service from the SAPS robbed him of job opportunities because he was issued with an expired clearance certificate.
“Last year, on April 1, I applied for police clearance and after months of not receiving any form of communication from them, I went to the Khayelitsha police station to check up on my requested certificate, but nothing seemed to work,” Dyamara said.
“I then lodged a formal complaint with the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa, Police Minister Bheki Cele, the national commissioner and the provincial commissioner’s office.”
Dyamara said after nine months of struggling to get his certificate, he was summoned by the Khayelitsha police to collect his “expired” certificate.
“This was a challenge, as I could not apply for any open vacancies within the Education Department because of this,” he said.
He said he applied for the certificate while he was still a final-year student, “because we are required to apply for the South African Council of Educators (SACE) certificate to be an educator working with adolescents”.
This followed an SACE announcement that new teachers were now required to provide a valid police clearance certificate when registering with the council.
SACE made that decision in March 2018 - that all people applying for registration with SACE needed to produce a police clearance certificate that’s not older than six months.
National police spokesperson Vishnu Naidoo said the application of Dyamara was received on July 29 at the CR and CSM in Pretoria and the certificate was issued on August 2.
"The applicant was notified through SMS that the certificate is ready for collection and that necessary arrangement should be made to collect it. The certificate was kept at CR and CSM Client Service Centre counter to be collected by a person or a courier service, however, the applicant failed to make due arrangements," Naidoo said.
He said the duplicate certificate was issued on December 5 and collected by Sipho from SKYNET Courier Services on behalf of Dyamara on December 6.
"The issuing of a duplicate certificate was informed by an enquiry made by the applicant on the November 29. This office has no record of an application for PCC made by Dyamara during April 2019," he said.
Naidoo, added: "The Certificate in possession of Dyamara is still valid as it was issued on December 5. The validity period of a PCC is three months thus his claim is unfounded."
Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz said: “I’ve raised the matter of poor service delivery with new provincial police commissioner Yolisa Matakata.”
He said people could report poor service delivery to the Western Cape Police Ombudsman (WCPO) at [email protected] or by calling 0214830669.
@SISONKE_MD