WATCH | Metro police recruitment chaos leaves petrol attendant in limbo

Petrol attendant Wenele Mashile, 32, was so desperate for a better-paying job that he resigned immediately after being told he’d be joining the metro police training academy.

Six months later Mashile has joined more than 400 prospective Joburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) trainees who are trying to keep their place after the recruitment process was found to be tainted.

At least 52 of the 500 new recruits were flagged for possible corruption in the process of their hiring, which has since nullified the entire intake.

Yesterday, however, the recruits suffered a setback when the Johannesburg High Court struck their matter off the roll.

Mashile quit his job at the Sandton garage in December and underwent months of training and vetting only to be told, together with over 400 others, that they would have to reapply to join JMPD.

“Emotionally and physically, we are damaged.” — Goldwin Hlulani Chauke

The trainees were meant to move into the next phase of their training in January, but then the JMPD said it would have to re-advertise and start the recruitment process from scratch.

Mashile said his group had completed all four stages of the recruitment process, which included a physical assessment, psychometric tests and the vetting process.

“After the home address verification process, they told us we would start in January, but they stopped communicating at the beginning of the year,” said Mashile.

“[So], we started visiting their offices. They kept promising that we would start in February, that everything had been finalised and that the JMPD had already handed our documents over to the city.”

Mashile said he has had to start looking for work again in order to support his child.

“I thought this was my big break. Working for the city would have changed my life. The home verification process felt like the final stamp of approval. Now I’m struggling a lot. I have no choice but to look for work again.”

Attorney Reward Nxumalo, who represents the applicants, said their urgent application to stop the re-advertisement of the JMPD trainee posts was struck off the roll due to a lack of urgency and defects in their papers.

A lawyer representing the city told the court that the matter could not be treated as urgent because the applicants had never received letters of appointment and were not entitled to assume they had secured employment.

The lawyer said allegations of corruption surfaced during the recruitment process, with 52 applications flagged for irregularities.

“The department’s principle is that when a recruitment process is found to be tainted, all parties involved are affected, including innocent applicants,” she said.

Another applicant, Gosiame Remoagile Khumalo, 23, a second-year BA criminology student at Unisa, said she was ready to kickstart her career and dedicate herself fully to law enforcement.

“We now have to proceed with Part B of our applications, which is to ensure that JMPD considers us first when the posts are re-advertised,” she said. “We are now waiting for dates on when that process [the re-enrolment of the case] will take place,” she said.

“They came to our homes to verify that we indeed lived at the addresses we had provided. According to our understanding, we were told that this was the final stage. Once that was completed, we were certain that everything was done. Unfortunately, they went quiet.

“This is a lifetime opportunity because it is a career. It is something I believe I am destined for, which is why I am so emotional about it. I simply want to kick-start my career. I am studying criminology, and that shows that I truly want to be in law enforcement.”

Khumalo said the ordeal has been emotionally draining.

“It’s heartbreaking. I don’t know how many times I’ve cried over this whole process.

“We all had high hopes. This has devastated my mother as well.”

Another applicant, Goldwin Hlulani Chauke, 34, said he saw the JMPD recruitment drive as an opportunity to secure a stable career, as he had worked as a part-time invigilator.

“This felt like my breakthrough because I had finally progressed through all the stages,” he said.

“We expected to be at the academy on January 1 because that is what was stated in the advert. During December, we enjoyed our holidays believing that, after the house verification process, we would definitely be accepted, even though we had not received appointment letters.”

Chauke said many applicants put their lives on hold.

“A lot of people resigned from their jobs. Others did not continue with their studies because they believed they would be starting at the JMPD academy.

“Some of us even told our employers that we would not be returning because we believed we had secured these positions,” he said.

“Emotionally and physically, we are damaged. Unemployment is already high, so our expectations for this opportunity were very high.”

Sowetan