Hawks get smallest slice of detective budget, Parliament hears

8 April 2016

Parliament – The Hawks only get 1.7% of the detective budget slice, Parliament heard on Friday.

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) presented their budget to Parliament’s police committee on Friday, where they bemoaned their small allocation.

The DPCI is a sub-programme of the Detective Services within the police, and therefore funds get shared between four sub-programmes.

For the 2016/17 year, the detective services have been allocated R16.7bn.

The bulk, over R11bn, goes towards criminal investigations.

Criminal records centre gets R2.2bn, while the Forensic Science Laboratory gets R1.8bn.

The Hawks unit, which is in charge of specialised investigations, gets R1.4bn, its boss Major-General Berning Ntlemeza told the committee.

The bulk of the Hawks budget - R881m - went towards salaries.

Committee chairperson Francois Beukman asked what they needed to do their work effectively, in terms of staffing, and resources.

The Hawks told the committee that the R1.4bn had been an estimate when they were first working with the budget.

This article first appeared on News24, see here.