By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Minister of Police Bheki Cele and his office spent R1.58 billion on accommodation, R42.7 million on catering and R1.8 million on entertainment since he took office in May 2019 until June this year.
This was revealed in Cele’s response to a written parliamentary question by DA MP Janho Engelbrecht.
Engelbrecht asked how much had been spent on accommodation, catering and entertainment for Cele, his deputy Cassel Mathale, and all other police officials since he came into office on 29 May 2019.
In a reply to a parliamentary question Cele revealed that his department has spent over R1.5 billion on accommodation and R42.7 million spent on catering since March 2019.
Taxpayers footed a bill of R7.5 million for accommodation, R6 986 on entertainment and R443 146 on catering for Cele, Mathale and ministerial staff over the period.
For other officials, the police spent R1.5 billion on accommodation, R1.8 million on entertainment, and R42.3 million on catering.
“Entertainment expenses relates to refreshments, in the form of coffee, tea, non-alcoholic beverages and biscuits, for visitors to the offices of all Senior Management Service (SMS) members in the Ministry and the SAPS including Station Commanders, which will not exceed two thousand rand (R2 000) per SMS member or Station Commander (irrespective of rank) cumulatively per financial year,” reads Cele’s reply.
“It should be noted that accommodation expenditure of officials in the SAPS, will realise at higher levels in instances where officials had to be accommodated away from their normal place of work, due to specific operational needs and deployment requirements, i.e. unrest periods, election, other events of national importance, detached duties, investigation of criminal cases, etc.”
No explanation for the catering costs was provided.
The police’s dwindling budget has been a concern during the period.
The Portfolio Committee on Police heard in April this year, when the police’s budget for the 2022/23 financial year was presented, that the budget for visible policing would again decline, as it had the year before.
The police also continue to spend more money on protection services than on investigating so-called priority crimes, as the budget for protection services is higher than that of the Hawks.
The police’s budget for the 2022/23 financial year is R100.695 billion, compared to the previous year’s R100.474 billion.