Police justify stadium payments

Committee on Thursday, that police were draining football coffers through payments made for their services at the stadiums.
A Zifa delegation, comprising board member finance Elliot Kasu and chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze, raised concern with the parliamentarians over payments being made to police who will be on duty at the stadiums.
Yesterday Harare provincial police spokesman, James Sabau, said the picture painted by Zifa to the parliamentarians was very unfortunate.
“Police duties and operations are governed by the Police Act and regulations and these are the regulations that determine what a national duty is,” said Sabau, in a statement.
“It is surprising that when the services of the police are required, the police command is contacted to provide manpower but when it’s time for payment, other platforms are used to justify non-payment.
“The organisation has its command that should be responsible for ironing out problems of this nature and we encourage all stakeholders to make use of them.
“We have duties that are clearly spelt out in our standing orders that when police officers attend to them, they should be paid and soccer is one of them. From 1000hrs to 1700hrs, that was mentioned by the CEO (Mashingaidze), a police officer will be standing at the gate battling supporters and he says it has to be national duty.
“Why do they (Zifa) pay themselves hefty perks after matches if this national duty issue is to be implemented? Should it only be for police officers whilst all the other service providers are paid?” Sabau also addressed the Zifa concerns that the police deployments to the stadiums were top-heavy.
“As for the other concern that police deployments are rank heavy, it only needs one to understand that policemen work under instructions,” said Sabau.
“There was a disaster at the National Sports Stadium and the organisation made an undertaking that such an incident should never happen again.
“This is the reason why there should be commanders who should give instructions in the event of any incident.
“The officer in charge, station, officer commanding district and officer commanding province, must always be available to activate all systems in the event of a need.
“These officers abandon all other programmes to concentrate on the match. In actual fact, the number of people who appear on the lists for payments are actually less than the number of members and officers who will be on duty in different capacities.”
He said they were not ready to discuss, using media forums, issues related to the Cosafa Women’s Challenge Cup, used by Zifa to justify that police were milking football coffers.
“The just-ended Cosafa tournament that was used as an example of justifying the milking by the police has a lot that we cannot discuss through the media,” said Sabau.
“We are aware of how much the football authorities submitted to Cosafa as the budgets for the ZRP and escorts and will be waiting for the right time to look at the matter if the need arises.