Shock at number of police officers without security clearance
MPs HAVE demanded answers regarding the high number of top police officials who have no security clearance and others refusing to be vetted.
The police top brass was in Parliament yesterday when the portfolio committee on police said it was shocked that there was a high number of senior officials who had no security clearance.
This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa released his report on the investigation into the State Security Agency.
Head of crime intelligence Peter Jacobs confirmed to MPs that they were not part of this report by the high-level review panel, chaired by former minister of safety and security Sydney Mufamadi.
But MPs said they were alarmed that a number of police officers in top management were not vetted.
In the report presented to the portfolio committee, Jacobs said out of 896 officers in senior management, 18 were refused security clearance.
Also, 46 of them did not submit vetting applications and 32 had expired security clearance.
Jacobs said 374 officers were in the process of being vetted.
Out of 183 major-generals seven had expired security clearance, five were refused security clearance and another five did not apply to be vetted.
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said answers must be given on what happened to those who failed security clearance.
She said there was previously no policy on those who failed clearance.
“Since March last year, you have had 30 officers whose security clearance was denied and hundreds who did not apply,” said Kohler Barnard.
“Why aren’t they suspended on the spot? We can’t have an organisation like this where people ignore orders.”
National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole said it was dealing with disciplinary cases on those who failed to comply with the order to be vetted.
However, for those who were refused security clearance, there were various processes in the police dealing with this.
“But this would soon change once they start linking the employment contracts of officers with vetting, said Sitole.
“If you have those with expiring certificates, if it’s a quarter of the organisation, you can’t handle them at once,” said Sitole.
He said the police had 192 000 members and it would develop capacity to deal with vetting.
Phillip Mhlongo of the EFF said he was concerned about top officials being refused security clearance but remaining within the police.
He said these people were sitting with sensitive information but had no security clearance.
Livhuwani Mabija of the ANC said the partywas also concerned about this matter and that the police must work on it.