The President of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) , Zizamele Cebekhulu, calls for all traffic officers to be under the Department of Transport.
Cebekhulu said this when addressing union members at the Johannesburg Correctional Centre where he expressed concerns about the placement of officers in some provinces where he also engaged on challenges experienced by public sector employees.
“We are dealing with nationalisation of traffic officers under one Traffic Act. Different traffic officers have different salaries. Traffic officers in Mpumalanga belong to the Department of Safety, others belong to the Department of Public Works. What does Public Works have to do with traffic?” he asked.
“In some areas we were surprised that traffic officers belong to the Department of Agriculture, in the Western Cape they belong to the Department of Cogta (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs),” said Cebekhulu.
Cebekhulu said traffic officers are shunted from one department to the in different provinces because the Department of Transport doesn’t want them and the ministers who occupy that portfolio don’t have control of the department.
“All Departments of Transport are under CEOs and there is nothing that connects a CEO and a traffic officer,” he added.
Cebekhulu also bemoaned the fact that traffic officers don’t have a death grant and said Popcru plans to introduce it.
“These comrades do not have death grants, police have it, correctional officers have it but traffic officers don’t. Any member that dies in the line of duty gets R250 000. It has been R250 000 for too long. It’s been more than 10 years and we want it to increase.
Cebekhulu said police shifts must also be restructured. Everybody must adhere to an eight-hour shift because a 12-hour shift is not sustainable.
So far Cebekhulu has already visited six provinces and plans to visit Boksburg Correctional Centre on Tuesday and Kgoshi Mampuru Correctional Centre Wednesday before wrapping up the Gauteng leg in Vereeniging Civic Hall on Thursday.
