PFTC The Professional Firearms Trainers Council

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Afternoon All
There was a second urgent application launched by the PFTC to interdict various state role players such as the QCTO and SASSETA from developing a skills program to replace the current firearm training qualification.
In simple terms the current training takes 2 to 3 days in order to be trained to apply for a competency certificate. A skills programme must , by law , be a minimum of two weeks long.
Many problems become immediately apparent. Very few people can afford to take two weeks off work to qualify to obtain a competency certificate and the cost would increase proportionately to the amount of time required. Trainers have also indicated that there is not enough training material or training required to fill two weeks.
The PFTC raised concerns that the state role players do not have a legal mandate to quality assure firearm training which vests in the PFTC by virtue of the 11 July court order and that policy and consultative requirements had been circumvented by the QCTO and SASSETA.
The judge ruled the application was not urgent and struck the matter from the roll and gave what we perceive to be a mild cost order. He excluded the cost of a second advocate and gave costs on a lower than normal scale. He did so because he indicated in argument that although the matter was not urgent, there may be contempt of the 11 July court order and that he had serious concerns with both the rationale for the skills program and the manner in which the state roll players had gone about trying to development the skills program when there was no apparent need for it and in the absence of a satisfactory explanation why it was needed.
We will be back again in court shortly.

Latest update from Martin Hood.