MBABANE: William Tsintsibala Dlamini, the National Commissioner of Police has called a special meeting for all Station Commanders as junior police officers plan to engage in another protest next week Tuesday.
“All Station Commanders and Station(Operations) Officers are requested to attend a special briefing by NATCOM on Friday 14/10/2022 at this Police Headquarters starting at 1000hours. Please attend without fail and treat as urgent,”reads a memo from the National Commissioner addressed to all Station Commanders in the country.
A questionnaire was sent to the National Commissioner, however, he had not responded at the time of compiling this report.
But insiders within the Police Headquarters told this Swaziland News that the meeting was meant to find possible ways of countering and disrupting the police planned protest next week Tuesday.
“As you can see in the memo that we sent you, we are planning to tell all Station Commanders to make sure that all the officers who went to deliver a petition to the Prime Minister are on duty next week, so that they cannot be able to march and demand the responses. I will update you after the meeting about the resolutions but that’s the plan,”said an insider within the Police Headquarters.
On Tuesday this week, Sergeant Dumsile Khumalo, the Secretary General of the Police Staff Association led police officers in a historic protest in demand for a salary increment.
Over R100 million meant to increase salaries for junior police officers was looted by the Police Executive Command.
The senior police officers created over twenty(20) Deputy and Assistant National Commissioners posts and subsequently shared the money among themselves after falsely convincing King Mswati that with the huge salaries, they were benchmarking with the Southern African Development Community(SADC) standards.
But in a public statement sent to this Swaziland News, the Police Staff Association warned the National Commissioner to stop victimizing its Secretary General and plotting to silence them.
The officers under the Police Staff Association vowed to continue fighting for their rights including bringing to an end the assault of members of the public during protests.
“We want to therefore warn NATCOM to abort the ‘show cause’ process that he wants to subject our SG to, with immediate effect. We also want him not to even think about engaging in disciplinary processes on any members of REPOSA or risk opening a can of worms. He should project that effort in addressing the litany of issues affecting police officers in the country, including living and working conditions and not necessarily confine himself on salary issues.
We also want to urge police officers and members of His Majesty’s Correctional Services to push harder, there is light at the end of the tunnel. They must also take courage in the wise counsel of prolific African writer, Ngugi wa Thiogo that 'no night is so long that it doesn’t end in dawn’. We also want to put an end to the violence and atrocities meted on members of the public, the working class in particular, and the students. We are not bringing this up to merely tag the society, but to borrow from the Students Union’s theme ‘we are members of the society before we are police officers’.We are interrelated as a people,” reads the statement in part.
The Police Staff Association then urged officers to attend the protest march on Tuesday in their numbers.
“On a parting note, we want to urge officers , those who are still active and those who were unjustly flunk out of the system to come in their numbers next week Tuesday 18/10/2022 at 1000hrs and peacefully convene at the Cabinet offices for our envisaged feedback,” reads the statement sent to this publication on Thursday.
National Commissioner William Dlamini.