Cape Town - With a budget of R102 billion, Police Minister Bheki Cele on Tuesday outlined a 10-point plan he said was aimed at responding to the ongoing outcry and complaints from South Africans in the fight against crime.
The SAPS has been allocated R102.137bn, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate R357 million, and the Civilian Secretariat for Police R150.489m.
Delivering his budget speech on Tuesday, Cele said the police management had adopted a new action plan.
“This includes intelligence-led disruptive operations, tracking and tracing of wanted suspects as well as the removal of illegal firearms.
“This approach is being intensified over weekends as directed by the crime trends and recording thereof.”
Cele said provinces with the highest incidence of reported crime had been prioritised.
“This ensures the prioritisation and resourcing of the top 30 high contact crime stations in the country.
“An additional amount of R65m is allocated to the provinces,” he said.
The proliferation of firearms remained a challenge.
Cele said the police were finalising a plan to tighten internal controls and electronically tag all state-issued arms.
“R20m is allocated for activities related to firearm licensing, compliance and enforcement of the Firearms Control Act,” he said.
He also said R70m had been allocated to the provinces to support community police forums to assist them with resources such as vehicles, laptops, torches, reflective jackets and other tools.
A further R5m had been provided for community interaction in terms of imbizos, awareness campaigns, summits and conferences.
Cele said an action plan was developed to respond to gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) crimes, vulnerable groups and sexual offences.
“This plan also focuses on the resourcing of FCS (Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences) units, both at national and provincial level, with a total of R1.3bn for both proactive and reactive responses to these crimes.
“An additional amount of R100m is allocated to provinces for prioritisation of GBVF response and the strengthening of FCS units.
“The SAPS service allowance has increased from R400 per month to R700,” he added.
“This increase is a major shift from the service allowance which had remained unchanged since the dawn of democracy.
“Now more funding is prioritised from the current baseline and this will be reviewed on a regular basis in consultation with labour.”
He told the MPs that R25m had been allocated to the provinces for enhancement to safeguard police stations and R1.8bn had been allocated for procurement of transport assets such as vehicles, trucks and buses.
A proposal has also been approved to improve the functioning of the 10 111 command centres.
Cele added that R1bn had been allocated for the construction and upgrading of police stations and that R30m had been set aside for the procurement of vehicles to ensure more mobile community service centres were available to the communities.
Cape Times