The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Police in the National Assembly has revealed that despite the critical role they play in fighting crime, informers on gangs are not paid.

Ian Cameron of the DA disclosed that members of the SAPS anti-gang units on the ground said they sometimes have to use their own money to pay informers for information.

Cameron made these revelations on Monday when the safety and security cluster briefed the media in Cape Town.

The matter came up when he was speaking about the need for SAPS crime intelligence to be effective; otherwise, it would be like fighting blind.

“Can I use the gang issue all over the country as an example, let’s use Johannesburg for example, if you speak to many members of the anti-gang unit members and the reason why I keep referring to ground members is because I believe it is the best way to real determine what the reality on the ground is, instead of just waiting for purely a parliamentary report back.

“They will all tell you that in many of the cases the informers either do get paid or if they (anti-gang units members) don’t pay them (the informers) they don’t have intelligence to work on and they fire blind, hence the violence that we continue to see,” Cameron said.

The non-payment of the informers comes as millions are pumped into the crime intelligence slush fund, and it is already being stolen and misused by some senior police officers who either enrol their relatives as informers and channel the money to them.