Members of the Walking Bus committee marched to the office of Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis after the City reportedly discontinued the initiative and replaced it with a protection force to guard municipal workers who will provide services in the communities.
According to IOL, the initiative was created by concerned mothers in gang-ridden communities to protect their children from gangsters while walking to school.
However, Dan Plato, former Community Safety MEC took over the project, reportedly promising money and equipment, which he continued to do when he took over as mayor in 2016.
The City has encouraged volunteers from the former Walking Bus volunteer project in the City of Cape Town to apply to its newest law enforcement unit.
The new unit focuses on the protection of service delivery teams, facilities and infrastructure in the next few months.
“This is an important step in our plans to make Cape Town safer”, says the City of Cape Town.
“This new unit aims to professionalise the former walking bus programme, giving qualified applicants better security training and equipment, and a broader scope of duties in the community. These teams will specifically help in protecting service delivery crews in identified crime hotspots across the city. These teams include water, fire, electricity, sanitation and cleansing crews who face danger and violence while trying to do their jobs to improve service delivery in communities.
“This unit is critical to ensuring that service delivery is not delayed due to public unrest that threatens the safety of our teams who then have to wait for law enforcement escorts to arrive before they can commence with their work. They can also help in protecting city facilities and infrastructure (like cables) critical to their communities, protecting schools and school routes. This project will have two significant public benefits: freeing up law enforcement resources, and speeding up response times to service delivery complaints in hotspot areas,” the City said.
This previous iteration of this project, namely the Walking Bus, was managed directly from the Mayor’s office and officially ended on 15 December 2021 when the last of the support contracts that had been in place with EPWP workers ended. Moving forward, the new safety project will no longer be run directly out of the Mayor’s office as it becomes professionalised under the Safety and Security Directorate.
Members of the Walking Bus Program has accused Hill-Lewis of replacing their initiative with a force that discriminates against their 2 700 members, reports IOL.
Members have also raised concerns over these fewer positions available, the requirements for the vacancies, and the application process.
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Picture: City of Cape Town