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Gauteng Premier David Makhura says the 200 of the 875 high performance vehicles and 75 motorbikes handed over to law enforcement agencies on Friday in Soweto will go a long way in achieving the provincial government’s target of reducing crime by 50% in priority police stations.

These vehicles have been fitted with latest technology including trackers, registration number plate recognition. This will allow the police officers to perform their job better.

This initiative to increase police resources was developed as part of the provincial government’s deliverology programme.

The ceremony was also attended by the special school safety committee that Premier appointed on Thursday to deal with sexual violence in schools. The committee is made up of MEC for Education, Panyaza Lesufi, MEC for Community Safety, Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane and MEC for Social Development, Nandi Mayathula-Khoza.

Makhura said this was not just in preparation for the festive season but was to ensure that trio crimes including gender based violence and drug related crimes were priorities and reduced.

“We have identified 12 priority clusters, 40 police stations in the province that contribute 50% of crime statistics nationally. We will focus on these clusters and stations to ensure they cut crime by at least 50%,” said Makhura.

The premier said they would put a special focus on crimes against women and children.

“We don’t want rapists in our communities. I want to urge the law enforcement agencies to our province to make life difficult for the criminals,” he said.

He commended the reintroduction of the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit (FCS) as the specialised police unit. He said increasing resource allocation to fight crimes against women and children was yielding positive results. The FCS is one of the major success stories because of the high rate of arrests and successful prosecution of perpetrators.

“Perpetrators must be caught and brought to book,” said Premier

The Provincial Police Commissioner, Deliwe De Lange noted that there was no excuse for the police now with the additional resources.

She said the police was deploying adequately trained officers to handle gender-based violence.

Issued by Gauteng Provincial Government