Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police has demanded details on how the South African Police Service (SAPS) intends to optimise its Cluster Management structure without having a bloated management structure and incurring unnecessary costs.

“SAPS should come before the Committee at a later stage and explain “in detail” how their proposal of beefing up the cluster management structure is going to work. We want clear roles and responsibilities of these cluster managers and a breakdown of how much this would cost taxpayers” said Committee Chairperson, Ms Annelize van Wyk.

According to SAPS, beefing up the cluster structure would assist the Police Service to achieve its mandate, adding that cluster managers would act as a link between Station Commanders and Provincial Commissioners, and SAPS would be able to devise interventions that would help police stations in a particular cluster achieve its objectives.

This explanation, according to the Committee was not sufficient, as it lacked detail on how the cluster managers would work and how they would be assessed. The plan was also silent on the financial implication thereof.

The Committee wanted to avoid having many layers of management whose existence would not yield any tangible results. “We still do not understand how capacitating the cluster structure would help SAPS. Some of the worst performing police stations already had cluster managers based in their station and there has been no positive impact on how the stations operated”

The Committee said they would have preferred SAPS to capacitate the offices of Provincial Commissioners and that of the Inspectorate in order to conduct the requisite oversight and provide the necessary support. The Committee resolved to grant SAPS an opportunity to state its case in more detail.

The Committee said this on Thursday during the tabling of SAPS annual report, which started on Tuesday