Kanganja rolls out point of sale machines

INSPECTOR General of Police Kakoma Kanganja has rolled out the recently launched Point of Sale (PoS) machines to four provinces.

The PoS machines have been distributed to Southern, Western, Central and Eastern provinces.

Earlier this week, the Zambia Police Service launched the PoS machines in Lusaka in a quest to reduce the handling of cash between the public and police officers.

The development comes after the launch of the Direct Deposit System that was introduced in 2017 as a way of enhancing efficiency in revenue collection.

Mr Kanganja expressed confidence that the new system would help build the image of the Police Service in view of the perceived rampant corruption in the service. He was speaking in Livingstone yesterday when he handed over the PoS machines to the four provinces.

Mr Kanganja said he was pleased that the service was re-aligning itself in tandem with Government’s policy of going smart (e-smart), migrating from the manual way of handling issues to the electronic system.

“I have no doubt that initiatives such as this one we are witnessing today will help to drastically transform the Zambia Police Service and enhance operational proficiency for quality and convenient service to members of the public.

“The electronic point of sale initiative is an improvement on the Direct Deposit System because instead of people going to the bank and queuing up, offenders will be required to pay there and then as officers will be equipped with PoS machines at their points of operations including road blocks and checkpoints,” he said.

Mr Kanganja said the initiative is timely because it restricts physical interactions among people as guided by the health regulations to minimise the spread of the coronavirus.

He said other advantages of the initiative was fast remittance of funds into the transit account, reduced cost of documentation (deposit slips) at banks and police stations, making payments outside normal banking hours and efficient movement of funds to control 99.

Mr Kanganja said that the initial phase would have 20 PoS machines in 10 provinces at selected police stations, on a pilot basis.

“After that, I want to assure members of the public that we will go fully fledged and ensure that we roll-out the PoS to the rest of the country as and when resources allow.

“In this vein, my plea to officers is to ensure that we aggressively support this project by working closely with staff from respective accounts departments, the banks and indeed all stakeholders so that this initiative resoundingly progresses well and succeeds,” Mr Kanganja said.