15 E Cape Hawks sent home
Popcru slams move as turf war with cops
HAWKS boss LieutenantGeneral Berning Mthandazo Ntlemeza has ordered the transfer of 15 Eastern Cape Hawks officers back to their police stations of origin in a major shuffle.
Ntlemeza’s instructions are contained in a letter dated March 10 and addressed to the provincial Hawks head, Major-General Nyameko Nogwanya.
The move has been described as “reckless” by police union Popcru.
Earlier this year, dockets of criminal cases being investigated by the Hawks that were not classified as “serious” were returned to the office of provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Liziwe Ntshinga to hand over to her police detectives to investigate.
In his letter to Nogwanya, Ntlemeza states: “By the direction of the National Head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) all members who were seconded to task teams to support provincial offices are hereby withdrawn from the task team duties with immediate effect.
“All task team members must report back to their respective offices with immediate effect with the exception of task teams that were sanctioned by the National Head of DPCI to perform task team duties under the Serious Corruption investigation and disciplinary trial team.”
Nogwanya read the marching orders to affected officers on Tuesday, adding “such members must ensure that by the end of March 25 they would have presented themselves to their original working stations.”
He finished by stating that “any member wishing to submit presentation shall do so while at [their police stations] of origin.”
Nogwanya confirmed the move to the Dispatch yesterday.
“Task teams have a start and an end date.
“The dockets which these members were handling have been sent back to the provincial commissioner’s office, so why should we keep the members?”
Of the 15 members, 10 are based at the Hawks’ Mthatha offices and are under the age of 40.
The remaining five are at the Port Elizabeth offices.
The Mthatha office will now be left with 11 Hawks officers, all over the age of 50.
The provincial secretary of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), Zamikhaya Skade, said the officers had been investigating political killings in Port Elizabeth, Tsolo and Xolobeni.
He said they were going to interdict the transfer.
“This is serious disregard of departmental policy framework,” said Skade.
“Transferring such a large number of people at one go the employer is supposed to be consulting with the unions and we were never consulted.
“Secondly this is a direct result of the turf war between Ntlemeza and national police commissioner General Khomotso Phahlane who, as the boss, started with the transfer of dockets from the Hawks to general detectives.
“General detectives are overworked and they carry a number of dockets. Now if you take these serious dockets that are from the Hawks and pile them on the detectives there are two things that you will get – stresses and underperformance on the part of the members.”