Durban city manager S’bu Sithole must remove metro police chief Eugene Nzama, or face consequences.
|||Durban - Friday is D-Day for city manager S’bu Sithole to remove metro police chief Eugene Nzama from his post – or there will be consequences, metro police officers have warned.
SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) provincial secretary, Jaycee Ncanana, said the union leadership would meet at 1pm to discuss a way forward.
“So far they (the city) have not delivered. Maybe they want to deliver at the eleventh hour, it remains to be seen. They are supposed to remove Nzama and act on the allegations.”
In the meantime, Sithole told The Mercury there was a need for “strategic direction” in the metro police.
Operational improvements were on the cards and he also had to address morale and discipline issues.
“Their conduct towards the public needs to change. If you walk around London and see the metro police, you generally feel welcome and safe but that is not the feeling in Durban.
Officers must be the ambassadors of the city,” he said.
This week Sithole announced the controversial safety and security cluster in eThekwini had been scrapped.
One of his first tasks would be to deal with instability and morale issues.
Metro police officers, who are Samwu members, picketed in Durban last month, demanding that Nzama be removed again. eThekwini mayor James Nxumalo said the city needed two weeks to deal with their concerns.
Nzama was placed on special leave last month following strikes by union members and protests by city taxi operators. He was brought back before his special leave ended.
Sithole said the Nzama saga was an ongoing issue that was being dealt with internally.
“My aim is not to antagonise people but to manage how we go forward,” he said. - The Mercury