The National Minister of Police Bheki Cele has, at last, agreed to join on an oversight visit to crime hotspots in the Western Cape, specifically around the Metro area. The decision comes after the Department of Community Safety wrote an open letter to the Minister in August, where they highlighted the constitutional failure of the national government in taking the safety needs and challenges in the province seriously.
In a statement by the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) spokesperson on Community Safety in the Western Cape, Reagen Allen, the minister made this public offer to him at an “Imbizo” which was held on Friday in Mitchells Plain.
According to Allen, they will use this opportunity to reiterate the horrific DNA backlog at SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory in the Western Cape.
“With my colleague from Social Development, MPL Gillion Bosman, we submitted a dossier to the Presidency in order to highlight the over 37,000 backlogged DNA specimens related to sexual offences. The Presidency, however, passed this on to Minister Cele last month and we have not received any feedback to date. I’m looking forward to taking this up with the National Minister on behalf of sexual offence victims and their families,” Allen said.
Allen added that he also shares the Premier of the Western Cape Alan Winde and MEC Albert Fritz’s concern over Minister Cele’s remarks at the Imbizo that the province is the most well-resourced province in terms of policing.
“Minister Cele should review his very own budget speech for this financial year, in which it is very clear that the province places 4th in resource allocation,” Allen explained.
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Premier Winde went on to say that they are concerned to learn that the minister has in the meantime refused to correct his misleading statement made on Friday. Winde describess the minister’s claims as deeply insulting to the poorest communities as any person who lives in an area with a high murder rate, especially in the Cape Flats, knows that this is not true.
“The truth is that we have an unacceptable police-to-population ratio in many of our crime hotspots and that the under-resourcing in these areas has not been adequately corrected by the National Government, despite our consistent calls for this to happen. If the National Minister of Police is not willing to acknowledge this very serious problem, we can only assume that he doesn’t have a plan to address it,” Winde added.
Winde also kicked off his oversight visits to under-resourced police stations on Tuesday, October 12, to gather the information that will be used to supplement local governments report on the policing needs and priorities of the Western Cape.
As part of my oversight visits to under-resourced police stations, my 1st visit was to the Lentegeur station, where I was given a report showing that Lentegeur has 103k residents, but only has 15 to 17 officers working per shift & that most police vehicles had done over 200k kms. pic.twitter.com/L7nEjbGwma
— Premier Alan Winde (@alanwinde) October 12, 2021
Winde alongside minister Fritz will also hold a joint digital press conference on Thursday, October 14, to unpack the 2020/21 Policing Needs and Priorities (PNP) report.
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Picture: Cape {town} Etc gallery