Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD) is addressing the staff shortages in the department.
Currently eight critical senior positions are being advertised and 265 metro police recruits are in training, said Chief Supt Wilfred Kgasago, spokesperson for the department.
He reacted to an earlier statement by Clr Jaco Terblanche, which highlighted the underfunding and understaffing of the EMPD.
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• One EMPD officer must protect nearly 2 000 residents
Terblanche said only 1 699 trained EMPD officials are available to protect the residents of Ekurhuleni.
Kgasago said: “The department continually, timeously and proactively motivates to council in filling of all EMPD vacant positions. It should be common knowledge to all that in any organisation employees resign, die or retire.
“Consequently, it does not take a magic wand to replace them overnight. The department is in the process of motivating for additional metro police positions given the growing vehicular volumes and pedestrian population in an effort to address the ‘officer:population’ ratio when compared to the neighbouring metros, which matter was raised by the mayor in his 2018 State of The City Address.
Kgasago gave a brief background and “educative advice in the context of the unsubtle accusations levelled”:
• EMPD is part of Gauteng and of the metros in the province
• The SAPS has more than 30 000 members deployed in Gauteng, of which two large SAPS areas form part of Ekurhuleni, namely the North Rand and East Rand regions
• The core functions of the EMPD is traffic policing, by-law enforcement and crime prevention. Erstwhile traffic departments’ mandate expanded with the advent of the metropolitan model
• Due to the limited powers of the metro police – comparatively speaking – the metro police are effectively the force-multiplier to the SAPS with limited legislative prescripts
