System to curb missing police dockets

PRETORIA: The rolling out of the ICT broadband will help in decreasing the number of lost dockets and lead to more prosecutions, Deputy Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services Hlengiwe Mkhize says.

The electronic investigation case docket management system will be an intervention at the police, which has been accused of losing or destroying dockets.

For a number of years, a substantial number of cases have had to be withdrawn or struck off the court rolls as a result of dockets going missing.

Mkhize said her department would be working closely with police authorities to ensure the problem is curbed.

Speaking to Cape Times’s sister paper the Pretoria News, Mkhize said her department’s objective was to ensure that there is a centralised data system that would decrease the number of hurdles faced by investigating officers.

“The responsibility of the new ministry is to make sure that the ICT broadband is rolled out so that service providers have a backbone to work from.

“Once this has been done, people have to be skilled, through e-learning, which would make it simpler for them to access government services easier,” Mkhize said.

She said once the platform had been created, the likelihood of files disappearing would be minimal.

“The stories of files getting lost will no longer be something we worry about because everything will be stored electronically. The files will be easier to trace and we won’t have an issue of files disappearing.”