Police not recruiting

Mbabane: Unlike as reported by the media earlier, the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) has come out to clarify that they were not recruiting yet.

A statement issued by the Acting Police Information Communications Officer Inspector Nosipho Mngiuni stated that ‘they were currently not on a recruiting exercise’.

“The Royal Eswatini Police Service would like to inform the public that there is no recruitment taking place within the organization.”

Last week the Times of Eswatini published an article stating that the Police Service will recruit about 700 police officers which will be used to fill the vacant positions within the police service, Mnguni said for now ‘nothing about the replacement is being done’.

There has been numerous calls from individuals who were inquiring about employment. Mnguni said it was during these times that people will then use the name of the Police Service to take money from people promising them jobs.

“It has become a norm that when such time of uncertainty arises, scammers emerge and take advantage of disparate citizens and rob them of their hard earned monies by promising to help them get recruited. The nation is advised never to accept any alleged assistance which will require any sort of payment in facilitating ones recruitment into the police service.” She said

If any one comes across such, they should report to the nearest police station or call 999/9999

“The public is once again reminded that any recruitment by the organization will be done only after an official advert has been placed in the local media”

Notably within the security forces the last recruitment exercise under the police service and Correctional Services was held in 2014 while the army had the most recent recruitment exercise in 2017.

Despite the hiring freeze last year media headlines from the Times of Eswatini on February 15, 2020 emerged saying “the government has been given the green light to recruit 600 personnel for the three security forces”.

This information was contained in a report on the budget estimates for the financial year 2020/2021 tabled by the chairperson of the Finance Sessional Committee, Manzini North MP Thandi Nxumalo.

In the report the allocation for the 2020/2021 under REPS in the recurrent expenditure is E1.03 billion and under capital expenditure, the Appropriation Bill, 2020, a total of E75 million has been budgeted. This will be a total of E1.1 billion when compared to the 2019 budget, which was at E1.08 billion.

Under the UEDF, the total amount allocated under recurrent expenditure is about E1.239 billion as compared to last year’s E1.227 billion.

An additional E50 million has been allocated to the army under their capital projects.