POLICE Minister Bheki Cele said there has been an increased demand for the issuing of police clearance certificates, a move that has seen SAPS unable to meet turnaround times.
“The increase in demand has been influenced by different legislative imperatives and expectations from employers to potential employees.
“Noticeably, there is high demand which is influenced by increased applications for expungement of criminal records, employment seekers, sex offenders register clearances and international travel,” Cele said.
He revealed this when he was responding in writing to parliamentary questions posed by DA MP Andrew Whitfield.
Whitfield asked about the current turnaround time for the issuing of police clearances; from application to the issuing of certificates in 2019-20 and 2020-21.
He enquired about the total number of certificates that had been issued and those that had not been not issued within the targeted turnaround time. He also wanted to know the reasons for the police not meeting the targeted turnaround time.
In his response, Cele said the targeted turnaround time in 2019/2020 was to provide 95% of certificates within 15 calendar days and 80% in 2020/2021.
He stated that the current turnaround time was 52.7% in 2019/20 and 74.95% in 2020/2021.
Cele also said 197 759 certificates were issued within the targeted turnaround time in 2019-20 and 183 863 in 2020-21.
A total of 177 335 certificates were not issued within the targeted turnaround time in 2019/20, while the following year there were 61 448.
Cele said there were various reasons for not meeting the targeted turnaround time, which was set using the previous year’s performance and number of applications received.
He explained that the targeted turnaround was measured from the date that the application was received by the Criminal Record and Crime Scene Management Centre in Pretoria. This excluded the posting and delivery time.
Cele said during 2018 a procedural change in the application process for police clearance was implemented.
“This procedure had unintended consequences which led to non-achievement of targets due to delayed and bulk submissions by police stations,” he said.
The minister also said the Criminal Record and the Crime Scene Management Centre had experienced system unavailability due to load shedding, system failure and mandatory system shutdown, synchronisation and system down time for 496 hours in 2019/2020 and 979 hours in 2020/2021.
He noted that the application for police clearance certificates increased by 59 808 in comparison to the applications received in 2018/2019 whereas personnel responsible for the function decreased.
“The effects of Covid-19 affected productivity due to the frequent closure of the offices for decontamination and increased absenteeism, for self-isolation and quarantine,” Cele said.
A total of 688 hours were lost due to the closure of offices for decontamination. Working hours were lost due to the number of personnel affected by Covid-19.
Cele said the personnel responsible for processing and issuing of police clearance certificates were also responsible for processing of finger prints for other services such as firearm licence applications, which increased dramatically due to the declaration of the firearm amnesty declared.
A total of 108 623 and 126 095 firearm applications were dealt with in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 respectively.
“The restrictions in line with the Disaster Management Act further compounded the challenges as this office could not post certificates or receive mail from the Post Office, which resulted in bulk deliveries when the services normalised.
“This situation created a backlog in the environment leading to under performance,” Cele said.
POLITICAL BUREAU