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Police's financial report not up to scratch - Auditor General

───   06:15 Wed, 12 Oct 2016

Police's financial report not up to scratch - Auditor General | News Article

Cape Town - The South African Police Service's financial report for the last financial year was not up to scratch compared to previous years, the Auditor General of SA said on Tuesday


The AGSA presented to Parliament's portfolio committee on police on the SAPS 2015/16 annual report, and said there were a number of weaknesses found during its audit.

A representative from the auditor general said that four key problems were identified within the police during their unqualified audit.

Those included: instability and the volume of vacancies in leadership positions; inadequate implementation of action plans; inability to submit reliable financial statements; and weaknesses in complying with legislation.

The representative, who requested not to be named when asked by News24, said police were meant to provide all financial statements by May 31, but many were lacking.

"We do allow them the opportunity to correct. When we audited them, we picked up errors and gave them the opportunity to fix them, but they couldn't fix our requests," he said.

He also said that 25% of the material findings on the police reports' usefulness and reliability were not complete, not valid, and not accurate.

'Rape statistics inaccurate'

Gareth Newham, of the Institute for Security Studies, also presented before the committee on the 2015/16 police report on Tuesday.

He said the ISS supported acting national commissioner Khomotso Phahlane's Back to Basics programme, and acknowledged he not had enough time yet to show any improvements at the police following the release of the report.

Newham's main point in ISS's analysis of the report was that the reduction in sexual offences during the release of the 2015/16 crime stats was not an actual reduction.

"Those of us working with NGOs haven't seen genuine improvement. What we've actually seen was a decrease in the amount of reported cases of sexual offences since 2013.

"Therefore the reduction in sexual offences is actually a reduction of reporting incidents, and therefore it seems like incidents are reducing as well."

Members of the police were expected to address the committee on the 2015/16 report after lunch.

- News24.com

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