Top cops don’t all have security clearance
Of 896 senior officers, 18 were denied clearance, 32 had expired clearances, Parliament told
THE police have revealed startling figures in Parliament of its top brass who have no security clearance, but continue to serve in their posts.
This left MPs surprised as a number of senior officials in the police structures have not been vetted and others have refused to be vetted.
Vetting is done to check on the financial and criminal background of the officer. This would also determine if they could handle sensitive and security information.
Head of crime intelligence Peter Jacobs told the portfolio committee on police yesterday that it was trying to speed up the vetting process.
National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole said it would now link the employment contracts of officers with security clearance.
In the report to the committee, Jacobs said out of 896 officers in senior management, 18 were denied security clearance. He said another 32 had expired security clearances.
A total of 374 officers were still in the process of being vetted.
Jacobs said out of the 183 majorgenerals in senior management, five were denied security clearance, seven had expired security clearance and five did not apply to be vetted.
Sitole said it was dealing with those who were refusing to obey an instruction to be vetted.
“What do we do with those who fail to comply with the order? At the moment, we are dealing with the disciplinary cases,” said Sitole. “On the cases where we issued an order and there was no reply, there will be disciplinary regulations.”
Jacobs said it was also conducting lifestyle audits on officers. It had conducted these on 9972 officers in top management and 0.85% were flagged for further validation.
Phillip Mhlongo of the EFF said he was concerned about the lack of action against those who were refused security clearance and those who refused to submit applications to be vetted.
Livhuwani Mabija of the ANC said she also wanted to know what would happen to the officers who had failed security clearance.
Dianne Kohler Barnard of the DA said she was concerned there was no previous policy that those who failed to get security clearance be asked to go. She said since last year there had been 38 officers who were refused security clearance.
Sitole said there were processes in place for those who failed security clearance and this started with the appeal board. He said crime intelligence would deliver a report on those with no security clearance.
However, in future, it would link employment contracts of officers with the security clearance. There was a capacity problem to vet thousands of members at once, but would develop capacity to do this, said Sitole.