The South African Police Service (SAPS) on Thursday partnered with Business Against Crime South Africa (Bacsa) and community forums to roll out an initiative that would deploy owner-identifying technology called microdotting to mark household assets in an effort to reduce trio crimes.

These crimes refer to armed robberies at homes and businesses and carjackings.

The initiative would be driven through a 136 community police forums in Gauteng that would educate and inform communities on the benefits of marking their assets with these minute identity dots.

The dots, each smaller than 0,8 mm, involve the use of an ultraviolet adhesive to mark any household item. Each dot carries a microscopic personal identification number visible through a scope (a small device that uses ultraviolet light and a magnifying lens to identify the item and, in turn, its legitimate owner).

The dots can be applied on a ‘do-it-yourself’ basis and each kit, containing about 3 000 microdots, can be purchased at between R400 to R500, depending on the manufacturer.

Gauteng Provincial Community Police Board chairperson Andy Mashaile said that the campaign would aim to deploy the technology to two-million houses within the next year.

He said that about 2 500 community members, with specific focus on youth employment, would also be trained to assist with the roll out of the initiative.

Bacsa representative Lorinda Nel said that the microdot technology was chosen because it was cost efficient, simple, and effective in reducing trio crimes.

Nel explained that once an item had been marked, it would be registered to its owner with the details kept on a database, which would be operated by Microdot South Africa, which is headed by Eddie Mokhoanatse, in conjunction with the SAPS.

Mokhoanatse said that once an item had been stolen, the owner needed to report the incident to Microdot South Africa, who would then update the system to show that the item, with a specific identification number, had been stolen. “When goods are retrieved by the SAPS they can then easily determine if it was stolen and who the real owners are.

“When a person wants to sell a microdotted item, the registration needs to be transferred to the new owner,” he added.

Nel said that the technology had already proven to be very successful in assisting with the retrieval of vehicles in South Africa, and from July 1 as regulated by government, it would be compulsory for all new vehicles manufactured in the country to be microdotted.

Bacsa has also been heavily involved in drafting a new second hand goods Act geared towards eliminating the market for stolen items.

In terms of the Act, that has yet to be promulgated, all second hand dealers have to be licenced, check the identification documents of sellers and ensure that no ‘suspect’ markings, or microdots, were found on the goods, before opting to sell it.

Other possible applications for deploying the owner-identification technology include the serialising of copper cables.

Copper cable theft has become an expensive headache in South Africa, and runs at a cost of about R5-billion to the country’s economy every year.

Microdot manufacturer Recoveri CEO Philip Opperman said that the company now hoped to apply the same principle as microdotting to copper cable theft through the use of microthreads (a string of microdots inserted at the manufacturer level).

These threads can either make use of a copper substrate, which makes it very hard to spot in the cable housing, or a cheaper plastic substrate at around 90c a meter.

Opperman said that the company, together with Bacsa, would now engage with big players, such as Telkom and Eskom, to make threading compulsorily in the award of their tenders.