The City of Cape Town has warned the public of predicted hot weather conditions likely to hit the Cape in the next two days. It expects the sunny weather will bring a surge of visitors to the City’s beaches.
The City and it’s Safety and Security Directorate staff will maintain visibility at beaches and public areas for the rest of the school holidays, said the City.
“Many people are still on holiday and I think they’ll want to make the most of any good weather, considering that both the peak festive season weekends didn’t offer the greatest weather conditions,” said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith.
With an estimated 30,000 people on Muizenberg, 12,000 at Strandfontein Pavillion, 8,000 at Strand and just 3,000 at Monwabisi, the popular beaches of the Cape were quiet on New Year’s day compared to previous years.
10 drownings were recorded between 1 December and 1 January 2018, compared to 7 during the previous festive season.
3 of the drownings happened at Mnandi, 4 at Strand and 1 each at Soetwater, Monwabisi and Muizenberg.
“The number of drownings are disappointing because we work really hard to ensure a safe environment for visitors to our beaches and other public attractions. This year we had extra lifeguards deployed, but it’s of little consequence if bathers venture outside the designated bathing areas or disregard the instructions of the lifeguards. We will look at each incident to see what the exact circumstances were and how we can improve our beach safety strategy in future,” said Smith.
“In terms of alcohol confiscations, the final totals are not yet available as checking in alcohol is a time-consuming process that requires numerous checks and balances. As at 13:00pm today, there were just over 7 000 bottles of alcohol in the City pound, totalling nearly 5 000 litres.”
He added that 47 children were reported lost over the festive season, but were reunited with their families. One other child was handed over to a social worker from the Western Cape Department of Social Development at Big Bay on New Year’s Eve.
“The Identikidz programme was implemented on various priority beaches, with just under 29 000 children tagged over the New Year long weekend.”
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