The national budget’s focus on law enforcement for 2024 “was insufficient against the backdrop of soaring crime levels and years of neglect in terms of budgetary allocations to our country’s criminal justice cluster .”
However, “Popcru has serious reservations about whether this funding is sufficient to address each sector within the CJC,” said union president Thulani Ngwenya.
In the 2024 budget speech, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced that 10,000 new police recruits will be trained this year. However, Ngwenya described the budget as “neglecting the courts and prisons systems,” as an “increase in funding towards both these areas is simply not enough to ensure that crimes are prosecuted effectively, or to successfully house and rehabilitate prisoners.”
“The court system should revert to the operational schedule observed in 2010, commencing at 08h00 and concluding at 17h00, expedite proceedings,” and better use its stretched resources. This is because, unlike the other sectors, Treasury has not disclosed how much these two sectors would be allocated from the R244 billion security cluster pool.