Home Affairs and Police Minister Voeswa Tsheka has pushed back against accusations that she is stalling the restructuring of police allowances, saying she still supports the reform and the improvement of the welfare and working conditions of the men and women in blue.
The Minister issued her statement late yesterday in response to a strongly worded memorandum from the Lesotho Police Staff Association (Leposa), which accused her of frustrating the process for paying monthly police allowances.
Leposa also said she had undermined it as a recognised police union by challenging its locus standi.
Leposa represents members of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS), promoting their interests, welfare and general working conditions. The memorandum, which it sent to members on Monday, is dated 5 October 2026 and addressed to officers across the country. In it, the union’s national executive committee narrated;
“You will recall that the National Executive previously informed you through our memorandum dated 10 September 2026, that an agreement had been reached on the proposed Police Allowance of M1, 500, which was to be implemented in three phases.”
Leposa said its negotiating team met Tsheka on 2 October 2026 “to obtain a clear final position on whether the agreed Police Allowance would be included in our salaries. To our disappointment and serious concern, the Honourable Minister informed the negotiating team that Leposa should go back and submit its concerns in writing for her attention.”
The association argues in the memorandum; “This position is unacceptable to Leposa, it is contrary to the understanding and commitments reached during the meeting held in the Honourable Minister’s boardroom on 29 June, 2026. We cannot continue to move backwards every time our members expect the government to honour commitments made during negotiations,” they charged.
Leposa said that, even more concerning, the Minister questioned whether the union had the right to engage with her or the Chief of Police. This question, they said, “left the negotiating team astonished and deeply concerned.”
The union described itself as a “recognised voice of of police officers, and our responsibility is to represent interests, welfare and working conditions of our members. We will not apologise for standing up for police officers. We will not be intimidated from raising issues that directly affect our members.”
In reaction, Tsheka yesterday said: “I wish to clarify reports suggesting that I have withdrawn support for restructuring police allowances or abandoned the welfare concerns of members of the LMPS. That account does not accurately reflect my position or the process agreed upon.”
She said that from her first meeting with the Commissioner of Police, “I acknowledged the challenges facing the officers, expressed support for addressing them and expressed regret over the treatment they had experienced. My position remains clear: we cannot demand high standards of service without properly addressing officers’ remuneration, welfare and working conditions”.
The Minister said she supported taking two requests to Cabinet as part of the police reform journey.
“As part of the police reform journey, I supported taking two requests to Cabinet: The retention of officers on leave pending retirement and restructuring of police allowances.”
She said Cabinet’s approval was subject to concurrence from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Police, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Public Service, so further work between the institutions was required.
To advance the requests, Tsheka said she met Finance Minister Dr Retšelisitsoe Matlanyane and her team, “accompanied by the Commissioner of Police, Advocate Borotho Matsoso, and the Director of Human Resources”.
At the meeting, Tsheka said Dr Matlanyane advised that both requests required careful consideration and asked LMPS to identify which should be addressed first.
“The Commissioner proposed beginning with retention. The agreed approach was for the relevant teams to complete work on that request first and then proceed to allowances”, the minister said.
Leposa’s memorandum disputes that sequencing. The union alleges that, in her meeting with its negotiating team, the Minister indicated that LMPS management had raised two major issues: the retention of police officers who remain on leave pending retirement, and the Police Allowance.
“We were informed that the issue of retirement should be prioritised, and that we should deal with one matter at the time as indicated by the Director of Finance, Leposa said. Leposa said its members should not be made to believe that retention was part of the package it negotiated.
“There were three key issues that Leposa negotiated and expected to see implemented”: the Police Allowance, the LMPS Administration Regulations, 2025, and the Workmen’s Compensation Regulations.
The union said it did not negotiate the issue of retention “in any form or at any stage of these negotiations. Retention was not one of the three issues placed on the negotiation table by Leposa.”
It added that “the painful reality is that, not even one of these three issues has been implemented. These means that, despite the negotiations and discussions that took place, our members have yet to see tangible results from these engagements.”
Leposa said it understands the disappointment and frustration this has caused among members: “It may seem as though we negotiated and talked and made commitments, but nothing changed ultimately in the lives of police officers.
“Leposa cannot pretend that everything is fine when our members are still waiting for the outcomes of their issues that were negotiated on their behalf. Our members deserve to be informed, respected and kept updated about matters that directly affect their welfare and working conditions.”
The union accepts its responsibility “to communicate more openly with its members and to continue pursuing these outstanding matters through the appropriate channels”.
But it maintains that the retention of officers on leave pending retirement “has no financial implication to the extend that it can affect Police Allowances. The two matters are important and affect our members in different ways.
The fact that one matter requires urgent attention cannot be used as a reason to push the Police Allowance aside. Our members cannot be expected to continue waiting indefinitely while commitments made to them remain unfulfilled”.
Police allowances, it said, have been long overdue “and affect all police officers, as opposed to the retention of which we do not even know how the selection criteria was reached”.
The union said the matter is not merely a question of money: “It is a question of recognition, fairness, respect and dignity for the men and women who continue to protect the people of Lesotho. It is therefore deeply disappointing that, after negotiations and assurances, our members are once again being asked to wait and submit further representations. Leposa will not remain silent” they said.
Summary
- Home Affairs and Police Minister Voeswa Tsheka has pushed back against accusations that she is stalling the restructuring of police allowances, saying she still supports the reform and the improvement of the welfare and working conditions of the men and women in blue.
- The Minister issued her statement late yesterday in response to a strongly worded memorandum from the Lesotho Police Staff Association (Leposa), which accused her of frustrating the process for paying monthly police allowances.
- “This position is unacceptable to Leposa, it is contrary to the understanding and commitments reached during the meeting held in the Honourable Minister’s boardroom on 29 June, 2026.
I am a journalist based in Maseru, Lesotho, renowned for investigative reporting. Over the years, my work has been published both locally and internationally, including in South Africa through the Amabhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Daily Maverick, among other publications.
In Lesotho, I have served as a senior reporter for several leading weekly newspapers, including the Lesotho Times, Public Eye, and Sunday Express. My reporting has focused on uncovering issues of public interest, promoting accountability, and giving voice to underreported stories.
In 2016, I co-founded the MNN Centre for Investigative Journalism in Maseru, an initiative dedicated to strengthening investigative journalism and fostering a culture of transparency and public-interest reporting in Lesotho.
