Police are abusing sick leave, with staff working at one police station alone taking an average of 77.2 days off sick each.
Abuse of sick leave has been identified as the “number one risk” to the police, and a “health risk manager” had now been appointed to refer serial absentees to “neutral” doctors to find out if they are really too sick to go to work.
“There are people in the department who, according to the sick leave register, are supposed to have died, because there isn’t any part of their body that has not been ill.
“However, they are strong and kicking. They are not dead,” said the chairwoman of Parliament’s police oversight committee, Sindi Chikunga.
Police management were appearing before the oversight committee on Tuesday to discuss an audit of building leases, but in her opening remarks Chikunga raised absenteeism statistics. These had been presented during the department’s annual report hearings last year. Reading from these stats, she singled out some of the worst police stations for absenteeism:
*In the Maitland police station in Cape Town, for example, the 85 staff took a total of 6 579 sick days in one year, at an average of 77.2 days each. “It means there is nobody working at this police station, period. Then the question is, ‘Why is it happening, why is it allowed to happen’?” asked Chikunga;
* At Hilton police station in KwaZulu-Natal, 39 staff between them took 1 337 sick days at an average of 34.73;
* Midrand police station’s 196 staff took 5 935 sick days at an average of 30.3;
* Silverton police station’s 148 staff took 3 144 total sick days for an average 21.3;
* Pretoria North, where a staff complement of 169 took 3 354 sick days at an average of 19.9 a person;
* At Alexandra Road, 158 staff took 3 708 sick days at an average 23.8 and
* East London police station, with a total of 402 staff and sick days of 8 538, at an average of 21.27.
What made matters worse was that some of these individuals had been promoted despite their atrocious work ethic.
“I think it is a matter we will be discussing with the department. It means we are rewarding such behaviour,” Chikunga said.
She said there must be doctors who were helping the culprits by supplying them with medical certificates and called for them to be investigated.
“Police have a right to investigate. It is their responsibility if they think there is corruption. It is the right of police to investigate that (type of) corruption, using medical certificates.
“There are serious challenges in this regard and… we would be saying to doctors, ‘You are really not assisting us; you are not assisting our country. You are not assisting anybody by granting these medical certificates willy nilly’.”
The service’s chief operating officer, Lieutenant-General Bonang Ngwenya, agreed it was a problem “that makes us not proud as an organisation, because it impacts negatively on service delivery”.
She admitted there seemed to be a “lack of command and control” and the staff who did arrive for work would “obviously” be “taking a lot of strain”.
Abuse of sick leave had been identified as the number one risk to the organisation and a “health risk manager” had been appointed to refer serial absentees to “neutral” doctors. Ngwenya said the department had convened a three-day meeting in Pretoria, due to start today, where provincial commissioners responsible for human resources, among others, would be taken through reports of the oversight committee and areas of concern would be discussed. - Political Bureau