Festival police unhappy with work conditions

Police protecting the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown have created a mini-drama of their own.

Members of the group of 82 Eastern Cape police officers complained that they were freezing and “starving” on their R180-a-day food allowance.

The officers, who spoke to the Dispatch, also complained about having to sleep in undersized single beds for schoolboys with only one woolly blanket during the cold snap this week. The officers, who are from different areas in the province, say it also grates that colonels, generals and brigadiers were sleeping soundly in Grahamstown’s famously comfortable guesthouse beds.

“Other government department employees are not treated like this. It is only us in the SAPS who get treated this way.”

Provincial police spokeswoman Colonel Sibongile Soci was unsympathetic. She said the R180 was standard threshold for meal allowance for SAPS members countrywide. “All the members have received standard allocated monies for meals which is standard across the country by the SAPS. The funds were available before deployment in most cases – depending on when members requested the funds.”

Soci denied that the police members were promised bed and breakfast accommodation.

The officers said they were shocked when they were booked in dormitories of a government school instead of the bed and breakfast they were apparently promised by Eastern Cape police management.

A sergeant, who asked not to be named, said: “There is absolutely no privacy. I am definitely not returning to this event again. The criminals whom we arrest are fed better than us and eat proper meals. They don’t eat from an R180 budget.

“I come from the Komani cluster and even transport to this event was a big mission. We had to fight to get transport. We are junior employees and we are scared of complaining because of victimisation which is rife here.”

They also claim they were promised breakfast but have to buy it from that R180, which is also for lunch and supper.

Apparently the number of police officers attending this annual event has dwindled over the years, a claim Soci denied. She said the number of officers allocated to the festival had in fact increased.

The constables, warrant officers and sergeants come from East London, Uitenage, Port Elizabeth, Mdantsane, Fort Beaufort and Alice.

The Eastern Cape’s international-class arts extravaganza was opened last Wednesday by Arts and Culture MEC Bulelwa Tunyiswa and ends on Sunday.