Madam Chairperson, hon members, this report before the House marks a mid-point in a process which began more than two years ago. I use the word "mid-point" deliberately because this is not the end of the process, nor is it the beginning. If we take our oversight and our accountability seriously, this is an ongoing process which is going to use this report that we table today in a productive and useful way.
In July 2007 the DA spokesperson on the SA Police Service, the hon Kohler- Barnard, wrote to the Auditor-General requesting that his office implement a case study audit of selected police stations to determine their performance. The DA's request for a special audit was repeated in September 2007 following the annual report on the SAPS which stated that there was a lack of monitoring of policies, procedures and standing instructions.
In June 2008 the DA requested that the audit should focus particularly on the 10111 call centres, this following alarming information received from members of the public and serving officers of poor service levels and a lack of police responsiveness.
The Auditor-General's final report of March 2009 which was considered before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Scopa, this year reveals, amongst other problems, systemic service delivery failures, particularly in the performance of the 10111 call centres, and a failure to develop and implement a coherent sector policing policy.
Scopa reports usually deal with audit irregularities such as the failure to maintain proper records of assets. It is rare that an audit report deals with what are, literally, life or death matters, and this is exactly what the 10111 call centres do on a daily basis. When a member of the public is faced with a critical emergency and people call 10111, they need help and they need it really fast; not 30 or 40 minutes later, or worse, not at all. The norm for reaction time to a code A complaint is six minutes. At one audited centre the response time ranged from 11 to 66 minutes, with none approaching the prescribed norm. Even worse, this deficiency was noted at no less than eight out of the nine audited call centres.
Sector policing policy was also sharply criticised by the Auditor-General. Inconsistencies in the implementation of sector policing and resource allocation are arising between different police stations, with no proper explanation for this discrepancy being provided. This discrepancy could, of course, put a crime victim in a life-threatening situation if they happen to be in the wrong sector in terms of resource allocation.
Scopa's recommendations to the House will require the SAPS management to report to Parliament on exactly what plans they have implemented to address each of the identified deficiencies. Both Scopa and the Portfolio Committee on Police will have a role to play in holding the SAPS leadership accountable. We believe that if this report leads to a serious engagement with the problems of the police management structures, accountability and service delivery, then it will have achieved some useful purpose.
In commending this report to the House, I would like to thank the other members of Scopa for the spirit of co-operation and consensus-seeking that characterised our discussions. I look forward to further engagement with the police on the subject of this report. Thank you.