By Staff Reporter
Junior ranked police officers are protesting what they describe as greed and abuse by senior officials in the service, whom they say added themselves to the list of officers coming from outside the city in order to pay themselves K6020 allowances per person.
Police officers who spoke to Daily Revelation on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals from their superiors said officers who were called from outside Lusaka during the recent AU summit were paid K6020 each and that some senior officials in Lusaka were included on the list of those coming from outside the city in order to be paid the same amount, but for those based in Lusaka there were discussions to only give pay them K1250 for the six days they worked, including working over time.
“There is an underground protest by most officers who participated in the just ended AU summit as non of them have gotten anything apart from those who came from outside Lusaka who got ma K6020 each yet all Lusaka based officers there is nothing & information on the ground is that the high command is planning to give them a total of K1250, despite them working for almost six days & nights as most of the delegates were arriving as late as 01hrs. Most of work from the security wing, especially the police started a day before & ended a day after making it a solid six days but even during the last parades, commanders instructed officers never to ask on their allowances as it was being discussed imagine!!! Now honestly speaking officers now feel even the Kanganja led command was much better than what is obtaining currently as they fail to calculate the rate used to come up with such a figure of K1,250,” one of the affected officers said. “Please let them take note that officials must not take this issue lightly. We saw it costing the previous Govt. The job done was the same moreover, those who came from outside Lusaka were accommodated, food provided, transport provided beddings provided. Why should there then be such a big gap in payments? Why are they taking long to decide on the payments? We thought in the new dawn the Kajobas, Mayambango and the team will do things differently but sha they are even doing it more worse & slowly officers are losing hope & getting frustrated each day. We even appeal to Honourable Jack Mwiimbu to be more active in looking at the affairs of his officers just like his defence counterpart who is always with his soldiers, not always just exposing officers even on little matters, when these junior officers who are the majority mean to work against, these senior officers won’t be able to bear the consequences.”
Another officer said while the junior officers we’re being given peanuts, it was depressing that some senior officials found themselves on the shortlist of those who were called in from outside the city.
“Imagine one crucial thing is that most of the senior officers from HQ & Lusaka division who participated had their names appearing from the list of officers from outside Lusaka so they can pay themselves those ma K6020. Isn’t this corruption? Or should we say ba Kajoba is not aware about this corruption? Honestly officers are not happy but then since it seems no one is concern there is only one good day for the officers,” said other officers.
But when contacted for comment, police spokesperson Rae Hamoonga said he had not spoken to the person in charge of operations to give a formal response from the police service.
