Police union threatens to embark on national strike if pay offer is not raised
THE Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) and Special National Executive Committee (SNEC) have rejected the current government offer of a 2% salary increase, including a grant of R1 000.
The union is demanding a 10% increase and has threatened to march in September.
A statement by Popcru said: “The SNEC resolved that in defending our hard-won gains, our members within the criminal justice cluster will embark on a march directly to the Commander-in-chief, President Cyril Ramaphosa to table our demands.”
They are demanding the following:
• Public servants be paid what is owed to them;
• A better salary offer on a baseline that is not less than 10%;
• All other agreements that are not implemented such as a housing scheme for public servants must be attended to:
• Treasury must reverse all austerity measures in the public service; and
• All vacant positions must be filled along with the hiring of qualified graduates to beef up the public service.
It also demands that no stateowned enterprise should be privatised.
Popcru said actions would be pursued on many fronts, including lunchtime pickets at all police stations, correctional centres, traffic institutions and everywhere its members organise.
Furthermore, the general secretary of Popcru, Jeff Dladla said an urgent summit was needed to address the serious violence and crime issues in South Africa.
He said the summit should, among other things, look into the escalation in violent crime, abuse of women and children, drug trafficking and the rehabilitation of unused mines, as part of the challenge facing policing.
Dladla called on communities, policing agencies, criminal justice, peace and stability groups, academia and stakeholders to play a role in averting a potential disaster.
“We are not calling for just a talk show, we are calling for a crime summit or crime indaba that will have a clear objective that we are going to evaluate in order to check that all the resolutions that are taken at the crime summit are implemented,” he said.
Dladla dded that combating crime should not be seen solely as a police issue, and all stakeholders, especially communities, were needed to come on board to play a role.
Popcru said if all failed they would be left with no choice but to withdraw labour.