A reply from Police Minister Nathi Nhleko to a parliamentary question from the Democratic Alliance has revealed that almost half as many new police officers came out of SAPS training academies into active service in the previous financial year compared to four years ago‚ the party says.

“This is a very worrying trend which means the South African Police Service‚ already suffering from personnel shortages at station level across much of the country‚ is shrinking and will have less capacity to prevent‚ combat and investigate crime in the future‚” said DA spokesman on police matters Zakhele Mbhele.

Figures released by the police ministry showed that there were only 2‚732 graduates from SAPS training academies in the last financial year compared with 5‚298 in the 2011/12 financial year.

 “These numbers show that the last three financial years of graduate numbers represent a more than 50% aggregate drop in trained officer output compared to the two financial years before that. This is a glaring failure in the SAPS’ human resource management which is rooted in an incompetent top brass who have the wrong priorities.

“As a department whose effectiveness in implementing its mandate to keep our communities safe depends almost entirely on having adequately-staffed and well-resourced stations‚ these figures mean that the SAPS will have fewer operational officers in the short to term medium for visible patrolling‚ vehicle roadblocks‚ public order policing and criminal investigation which form the basics of police action to deter and detect criminality‚” said Mbhele.

“Furthermore this declining intake of police recruits into the rank-and-file‚ in the face of normal attrition levels and the recent exodus from the Detective Service‚ will doubly exacerbate the under-staffing problem in the Service.”

This would affect an array of performance areas that directly affected ordinary citizens when they had to rely on the police in times of need‚ Mbhele added.