ZRP says it needs US$4.2 million to secure fingerprint search system

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has an outstanding payment of US$4.2 million that’s required to acquire a fingerprint search system.

According to Newsday, this information was shared by ZRP’s Finance Director, Police Senior Assistant Commissioner Wiklef Makamache, in an address to a Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs.

In the same session, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs Melusi Matshiya defended the ZRP’s retention of fees generated through procedures such as traffic fines.

This money is used by the ZRP to meet some of its obligations, an arrangement which was green-lit by the National Treasury which hasn’t been able to fully meet the police’s financial requests.

One of these requests was for the funds to complete the purchase of an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). This is software that automatically identifies whether or not a submitted set of fingerprints matches any that are stored in a central database.

Getting the system was part of a project that is expected to migrate all fingerprint search from the manual process – which delays the legal process and is open to error and abuse – to a faster, automatic process.

In 2014, following the completion of the first phase in the migration to an automated system,  the Commissioner General of ZRP, Augustine Chihuri appealed for funding from the national treasury to complete the process.

It was expected to have been wrapped up by 2017 with the complete integration of the system within Home Affairs departments, however, the lack of resources has delayed the project.

Unless the Ministry of Finance provides the resources needed to complete the purchase of the system, it’s likely that funds raised through cash generating activities like traffic fines will have to meet this challenge.