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Reuters
File photo: Reuters
Durban – More than four years after the crime-busting Scorpions unit was shut down, investigators who were transferred to the police are still fighting to get the pay they were promised.
And, they say, a court order giving the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) until May this year to sort out their pay and service conditions has been ignored.
They are now going back to court next month in an application for an order seeking to have the minister of police and the national director of public prosecutions declared in contempt of court and to explain why they should not be fined or jailed.
The Scorpions were formed in 2001 to fight organised crime and corruption.
It was “merged” with the police in 2009, effectively shutting it down, after falling foul of political favour because of the targets of some of its investigations, including then deputy president Jacob Zuma.
But the transferred investigators complained that they were out of pocket and, through the Public Servants’ Association (PSA), approached the Labour Court in Joburg arguing that they should not be financially worse off then they were when they were on NPA “notches”.
The result was a settlement agreement which was made an order of court at the end of February this year.
In terms of this, the minister of police was to bring their salaries in line with those of the NPA – a difference of about R26 000 a year – and to adjust all subsequent annual increases accordingly.
Records were to be amended to reflect continual service within the police, specifically with regard to potential promotions, long service awards and calculating gratuity in the pension fund.
PSA general manager Danny-Boy Zamile Adonis said the order had to be complied with by the end of May but nothing had happened.
In the contempt affidavit filed with the court, he said lawyers acting for the respondents had, in June, said the person responsible was on leave but the minister was “in the process of making the salary adjustments”.
But still there had been no word and this “deliberate conduct” justified the contempt order and a punitive costs order. The matter will be in court on October 18.
The Mercury
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