‘Funding dearth’ stifles Ipid

A SECURITY expert has warned lack of funding and resources at the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) made it difficult for the watchdog to carry out investigations.

“That makes them less effective. Misconduct within SAPS is huge as you have more than 200 000 members so it is extremely difficult for Ipid to perform its mandate,” Institute of Security Studies’ Johan Burger said yesterday.

He made the comments after Ipid told Parliament’s portfolio committee on police this week about its budget constraints.

Ipid executive director Robert McBride decried the institution’s inability to achieve full independence with its current funding.

Burger said Ipid faced the same problem as the public protector did. “Government pronounces that corruption committed by officials in government will receive priority, but when providing resources, government does not come to the party.”

He blamed the poor resourcing on a lack of political will and possibly an attempt to render anti-crime and anti-corruption bodies ineffective.

During the portfolio committee meeting, McBride said the directorate needed investigators who were highly specialised to deal with systematic corruption. However a number of posts had been frozen because of cost-cutting.

He said there was no money for an approved expansion strategy, which envisaged a staff complement of about 400, as opposed to the 535 target when Ipid was formed.

Ipid’s investigation and information director Matthews Sisoko said the directorate had continuously raised the issue of capacity. “We envisaged having an investigative capacity of 516 investigators spread throughout the country,” he said, adding that one of Ipid’s main challenges was response time to crime scenes.

McBride and Sisoko both said Ipid had incurred unforseen expenditure due to the Farlam commission which investigated the shooting of striking miners by police at Marikana.