The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) has accused SAPS management of failing to engage with it, specifically in terms of how officers will be compensated and what hours their members will be expected to work on election day.

POPCRU has called on the Minister of Police Bheki Cele to urgently intervene in the matter, as members are not happy about their working conditions.

It comes as Cele opened the NATJOINTS Coordination Centre this morning. The Centre will serve as a central point of contact on election day to ensure a swift and coordinated response to incidents.

POPCRU says in addition to being in the dark about overtime pay, the SAPS has also violated the Safety and Security Sectoral Bargaining Council (SSSBC) Agreement 2 of 2009, which serves as the rules of engagement for such discussions.

President of POPCRU Thulani Ngwenya says they fear SAPS has not taken election preparations serious, relegating the preparatory responsibilities to each province instead of implementing a comprehensive unified strategy.

Given the current political climate, we are of the view that the national office of the SAPS should have been leading the process of policing the upcoming elections. By decentralising this important role, we believe that this is yet another attack on collective bargaining.

Ngwenya says as a union, they are convinced that there are some elements within the management of the SAPS who want to ‘deliberately sabotage’ the upcoming elections.

He explains they hold this view because members’ working conditions have not been concluded and are creating some confusion, with less than a week to go before 27 million people are expected to head to the polls.

Police officers are expected to be deployed in full force, with heightened police visibility in hundreds of high risk areas.

POPCRU has been relentless in its pursuit of a sit-down with SAPS management to over the past three months to resolve substantial issues concerning our members. But, they have consistently shown that they refuse to come to the table on matters relating to members’ working conditions.

Ngwenya claims thus far, this is no clear deployment plan for members, nor is there a clear catch-up plan on when workers will be allowed to recover their leave days for working over this period.

Our concern is that the SAPS is again going to mislead the public at the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (NatJoints) meeting, where we believe they will claim that all is well while the above conditions have not been finalised at the bargaining council.

He warns the ‘arrogance’ of SAPS Management is likely going to have a direct impact on the elections as it relates to the finalisation of deployments.