Louise Flanagan
IT WILL cost less than R1 000 to provide a police officer with a riot shield and six canisters of pepper spray.
The SAPS has finally bought the riot shields and pepper spray it ordered last year when the Marikana shootings made the headlines.
It is getting 1 953 riot shields for a total of R841 587, a year’s worth of pepper spray, that is, 87 905 canisters for R6.59 million, and 61 000 pouches for the pepper spray at R610 000. The prices include VAT.
This works out at R431 for each riot shield, R75 a can of pepper spray and R10 a pouch.
For less than R1 000, a police officer can get a shield, six canisters of pepper spray and six pouches.
The total cost for those goods is R8.04m.
The SAPS spends twice that on catering, with R16m in the 2012/13 budget. The police spend more money on entertainment, at R12m for the year.
The August 16 shootings of striking miners by police at Marikana near Rustenburg, which highlighted the need for non-lethal crowd control methods, are being examined by the Farlam Commission of Inquiry.
Just weeks after the shootings, The Mercury’s sister paper The Star reported on SAPS plans to buy the non-lethal crowd-control items.
The police had been planning to buy some of the items, but the process took months.
The Star reported that the pepper spray specifications were revised in April last year, but were only signed off by a brigadier on August 15, the day before the Marikana disaster.
“The canister contents shall be non-flammable, ozone friendly and of food grade. No permanent harm shall be caused by the contents under normal use,” the specifications said.
The riot shield specifications were approved in March last year, and were for transparent polycarbonate shields with “police” on them in 10cm-high blue capital letters.
The police also advertised at the same time for copies of the textbook Applied Law for Police Officials, but that contract had not yet been awarded, said the SAPS.
Bidders
The riot shields are being bought from Quality Safety, based in Randvaal, while pepper spray is being bought from WSTP General Construction and Projects in Pretoria.
There were seven bidders for the riot shields and Quality Safety’s bid was by far the lowest.
There were 21 bidders for pepper spray, but the SAPS listed only three as complying with the bid specifications and, among those three, WSTP was cheapest.
