Phahlane’s driver jumps queue to get state-funded house – report

Acting national police commissioner Lieutenant General Khomotso Phahlane’s driver was reportedly helped to jump the queue to get a state-funded house, while other police officers have to wait for years to receive a state house.

The Times reported on Monday that, according to emails in its possession, the sudden approval of a state home for the driver, allegedly within a week, was highly unusual.

The paper said the reason for allocating the state-funded house in record time was apparently to ensure the country’s top cop could be fetched from home and dropped off quickly at his office in Pretoria.

Following a discussion between Phahlane and the Gauteng provincial police commissioner about a house being made available for his driver, provincial police reportedly ordered the Pretoria Central police station’s housing committee to allocate the house.

The driver is said to have a home in Capital Park, Pretoria, close to the national police headquarters and Phahlane’s home north of the capital city.

According to the report, another of Phahlane’s drivers was assigned a house under similar circumstances in October 2016.

“The Times is in possession of an e-mail that details the procedures that should have been followed in allocating police housing. It was sent to a police officer who had incorrectly applied to the provincial housing committee.

“It explained that a police station’s cluster housing committee would have to identify a vacant house that had not been allocated to any qualifying member. If a house were available, a recommendation would have to be sent to the provincial housing committee chairman for a final decision,” the report stated.

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Police spokesman Brigadier Sally de Beer told the paper the matter over the allocation of the house had no relevance to the acting national police commissioner.

“The allocation of official houses is based on predetermined criteria which were fully complied with. The department will not deliberate on circumstances relating to the allocation of the accommodation referred to via the media.

“Those who opted to distort the facts in pursuance of their malicious agenda are advised to engage internal processes to register their grievances,” De Beer reportedly said.

Phahlane has been under increasing scrutiny after a public spat over a corruption and defeating the ends of justice investigation into him by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate’s (Ipid).

The top cop believes Ipid is conniving with private investigator Paul O’Sullivan to try him in the court of public opinion, which the police watchdog organisation has denied.