Popcru plans Union Buildings march, approaches local SAPS
The union has taken to picketing at national crime institutions and plans to take to the streets in a national march to air their grievances.
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) plans to march to the Union Buildings on Friday after they said their pleas with management fell on deaf ears.
The national march plans to deliver a memorandum of demands to the different governmental heads.
This march will follow two weeks of lunchtime pickets at correctional, traffic and police institutions across the country.
Sebenza Police Station, according to its spokesperson Sgt Sharron Tsotsotso, is one of the local stations Popcru approached.
“They contacted us, but we do not know as of yet whether our members will participate,” Tsotsotso told Express. She added that she would have these details by Thursday.
Capt Jethro Mtshali, spokesperson for Kempton Park SAPS, said his station had not been approached. Even if they were, he added, active police members would not participate.
“Our policy is that you cannot participate in a march if you are on duty. Members will be marked absent without leave.”
The list of Popcru’s demands includes the restructuring of the SAPS, an end to police killings, one police service and one police act, finalisation of grading of public servants’ appointments, promotion policies and finalisation of shift patterns.
According to spokesperson Richard Mamabolo, Popcru held “numerous time-spanning engagements with employers” in the criminal justice cluster over working conditions faced by its members.”
These engagements, he added, failed to signify real improvements.
Therefore, he said, Popcru members were left with no other alternative but to take to the streets.
“These prolonged delays finally led to a decision to go to the streets by way of planning a national march.”
Mamabolo also cited “the recurring inmate escapes, stabbings, gangsterism and lack of rehabilitation” as being “remnants of the kind of conditions our short-staffed correctional officials find themselves in”.
“And they are the ones regularly taking the bulk of the blame for these, yet being forced to work under inhumane conditions, which they cannot be in charge of unless some drastic actions are taken,” said Mamabolo.
He said most correctional service officials did not have proper uniforms.
“They are also forced to work illegal shift patterns and do not have a promotion policy,” he said.
