Earlier this month, Hawks head, Major-General Berning Ntlemeza, called for the crime-fighting unit to get its own budget vote in a bid for more independence from the SAPS.

Presenting his budget vote in Parliament, Nhleko said that in the current financial year, they had increased the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation’s (Hawks) budget to R1.4 billion.

This would help cater for two new units focusing on drugs and firearms. "In the outer years of this period (three financial years), the Hawks will be funded directly from Treasury, and this should satisfy compliance with the ruling of the Constitutional Court in entrenching the independence of the unit," Nhleko said.

Ntlemeza, in a meeting with the police committee earlier this month, called for the Hawks to be independent of the SAPS’s detective services programme. "The DPCI is trying to protect this independence. We are pushing that the country must see us as independent," he said.

Committee chairperson, Francois Beukman, said on Thursday that a separate budget vote would strength the unit’s independence.

-News24.com