20 FEBRUARY 2001
The Department of Safety and Liaison has made an undertaking that it will contribute to the process of making better the lives of our people through interaction and partnerships with various stakeholders. In order to achieve this, a number of initiatives have been planned for this year and our emphasis will be mainly on strengthening and capacitation of Community Police Forums solid productive relations with business entities and coordination of efforts on the implementation of social crime prevention initiatives with local authorities.
Credible Information Systems In the past months we have witnessed criticism coming from various quarters of our society and the opposition parties about the issuing of crime statistics. I want to support the initiative taken by our National Minister with regard the placing of a moratorium on the release of crime statistics.
As a responsible government we cannot continue to release information that is inaccurate and sometimes misleading to the police in planning crime-combating operations.
We have already trained about 3000 members throughout the country on capturing, extraction and analysis of crime information. The enlistment of 300 data typists is currently underway and this process should be completed by April 2001. We are also in the process of ensuring that relevant IT systems are improved so that the capturing of information is correct and accurate. The President and the National Minister have said that by June 2001 the moratorium on crime statistics would be reviewed.
Together with National Ministers of Safety and Security, Justice and Correctional Services we will be looking at the implementation of the following projects on information systems: -
It is our belief that all these processes mentioned would hasten the transformation of the criminal justice system into an effective instrument of investigation and prosecution of crime.
CO-ORDINATED LAW ENFORCEMENT
The co-ordination of the Criminal Justice Cluster within the province will receive priority and a number of projects will be implemented. The implementation of the Domestic Violence Act has received a lot of attention and focus is on ensuring that we deal with gaps and problems identified by each sector.
We have identified strategic priorities such as:
There will be a high concentration on priority stations within the province in order to:
One of these forces has already been established as part of Operation Tshwane and this has led to the arrest of more than 20 hijackers during the first two weeks of the operation. During the past months, there have been false reports that the closure of specialised units would have a negative impact on crime.
I want to assure members of the public that this new approach of decentralising these special units to areas and station level will ensure a spread of resources and greater accountability. For this purpose more than 500 SAPS specialised investigation units are being transformed into two types of units, namely, the Organised Crime Units and the Serious and Violent Crime Units. It is my belief and those in my party that such an intervention will lead to police working together with members of the community and taking control of their own environment.
In the past weeks we have witnessed a number of hijacking incidents within the Tshwane Metropolitan area. We have already met with the Traffic Officials and other law-enforcement agencies in order to coordinate efforts around crime prevention. A high concentration of efforts will be deployed along the Mpumalanga and Kwa-Zulu Natal corridors of the N3 and N4 freeways.
Police stations situated next to Highways have been declared priority stations to specifically address hijackings, car theft and other robberies.
This is in an effort to close the escape routes. was established specifically to address armed robberies and hijackings in Pretoria. This team has already proved that once you put together various skills and efforts together the output thereof is more significant. To compliment the efforts of this team of investigators joint operations of SAPS and Traffic Officials will ensure high visibility.
We are looking at exploring other forms of electronic surveillance other than CCTV. Discussions between the Department and black business entrepreneurs are at an advanced stage. We will be piloting these systems and audit of all CCTV systems in the province will be undertaken to maximise impact and utilisation.
COMMUNITY MOBILISATION
We have on several occasions stated that the government and the SAPS in particular cannot deal with crime on their own; it is therefore imperative on various communities to play an active role in issues affecting them. Our emphasis will be on continuing to empower police to work closely with communities in crime combating as well as crime prevention.
We have already trained 30 members of CPF's in various skills such as Project Management and Financial Management Skills. Currently, we are now finalising details for further 160 to be trained before June this year.
The training of representatives of various organisations on the functioning of the Criminal Justice System, understanding the Domestic Violence Act and role and responsibilities of CPF's has been completed. We will now be expanding to areas such as Alexandra, Katlehong, Bekkesrdal, Soshanguve, Zevenfontein and others. Last year we had a workshop with black business leaders and most of the companies approached so far have committed themselves to assist the police with resources and also capacitate various community-based structures and police stations. Companies such as Uthingo, Labat Africa, Denel, and others have already made firm commitments to work with the police, the Department of Safety and Liaison and communities in various areas of expertise.
The type of community mobilisation that we will continuously implement has already assisted various law enforcement agencies to realise their crime prevention strategies.
As a government of the people, we are committed to ensuring that our people participate in programmes of government. We will continue to establish new partnerships between the Secretariat for Safety and Liaison and other organs of civil society in support of the efforts of SAPS.
SOCIAL CRIME PREVENTION
The development and implementation of social crime prevention strategies targeted at youth who are either at risk of becoming offenders, or victims of crime, will continue in the next financial year. Areas such as Soweto, Alexandra, and Westbury have been identified as priority areas. In addition, attention will be given to the area of Pretoria that has shown an increase in social fabric crimes. Through community mobilisation we have managed to deal with violence in schools in areas such as Soweto and Kwa-Thema. Our joint intervention has led to close interaction between police, students, teachers, CPF's, SGB's and parents.
Our primary aim is to mobilise students, together with parents and teachers and the SAPS to find solutions to the problems of crime and truancy in Gauteng schools. My department together with the department of Education in Gauteng is implementing this project.
In partnership with other stakeholders, we have implemented Tiisa Thuto in 40 schools at Soweto and we are now planning to rollout such a project to other areas such as Sebokeng and Pretoria. Discussions between police district directors of GDE have resulted in developing joint management of the process and identifying possible interventions.
One of the interventions that we will be concentrating on this year is to deal with young people who are engaged in and/or at risk of engaging in criminal activity. In this programme we are targeting young men and women who are between the ages of 14 to 25. We have already trained 60 representatives of youth from various areas within the province. The training programme focus will mainly on life skills and on issues on policing and social crime prevention.
Together with the Soweto Youth Summit we have developed a Directory of Youth Organisations that are operating within Gauteng. This has assisted us and other members of the broader community of Soweto to have an understanding of initiatives that are being implemented.
Our partnership with various women and youth organisations in order to deal with violence against women and children will continue to receive top priority. We will be training a number of police officials on basic skills on gender sensitivity and on how to handle Domestic Violence cases. Other priority areas include working with victims of violence in order to ensure they are aware of their rights.
The provision of services to victims of rape and of any other form of abuse has been made possible by opening Trauma Centres in various police stations such Eldorado Park, Hillbrow, Soshanguve, Vosloorus, Katlehong and Thokoza.
During this financial year more are being targeted for police stations that are in remote areas such as Orange Farm, Kopanong and Sebokeng.
A number of NGO's and CBO's have been identified in these areas and we will work in partnership with them in order to speed up delivery of services to victims of crime and violence.
Our continuous intervention has now resulted in local authorities understanding their responsibility in developing local crime prevention strategies. However, there are still some of authorities that my department will further engaged with a view to ensure that all aspects of by-law enforcement and, local crime prevention are adequately addressed. The process of establishing Metropolitan police in Johannesburg Unicity is at an advanced stage. The Executive Council of Johannesburg Unicity has already submitted its application for the establishment of Municipal/Metro Police Services.
The Inter-Departmental Coordinating Committee, which is responsible for formulating criteria, and conditions for the approval of applications by local government structures, that seek to establish Metropolice, will scrutinise the application within a period of six weeks and advice myself and other MEC's if it meets the criteria.
MONITORING OF SERVICE DELIVERY
The process of transformation in the SAPS has been identified as one of the areas that we will continue to focus on and in this regard we have commissioned a diagnostic audit into transform Rand. Through our interventions in this area, we now have appointed a competent Black Deputy Commissioner and the Head of Detectives. Stations such as Krugersdorp and Carltonville are receiving attention from my Department. Together with North West we are implementing a joint plan that will deal with crime within the mines and the broader community.
Our aim is to look at broader organisational transformation issues such as employment equity and skills development. Upon the completion of the audit and lessons learnt, we will be able discuss the rollout to other areas within the province. The monitoring of the Criminal Justice System will also receive top priority and we are looking at improving the following:
Our understanding is that transformation should deal with issues such as representativity together with business practices and organisational the culture of SAPS. The ultimate objective being that of service excellence.
One of the critical aspects of this project will be to develop the existing skills base in the SAPS as well as to explore the possibility of lateral entrants into the SAPS in key strategic areas in the SAPS. We want to ensure that the process of transformation leads to improved service delivery especially to the community. Our monitoring and evaluation function plays an integral part in the implementation of this project.
CHALLENGES:
The promotion and building of trust between police, various units of the Criminal Justice System ands members of the public remains one of the challenges facing our government. We also have to deal with public perceptions and ensure that there's growing support for SAPS and in this regard I want to urge members of the public to avail themselves and work with us in the implementation of social crime prevention. The destruction of the market for stolen goods remains one of the priorities and we will address the issue of morals.
We will continue to mobilise additional resources for the police so that we can be able to complement what has been budgeted for in the police budget.
Our interaction with various business organisations is starting yield positive results in this regard. Resources for will never be enough and we have to find better ways of utilising them better.
Communication with our communities remains one of the challenges that we need to improve and we are looking at alternative communication methods where we will make communities understand their role in crime prevention.
Whilst we want to be harsh on criminals we should also ensure that we protect rights of victims and witnesses. The emphasis will be the implementation of Victim Empowerment. As the Gauteng government we are determined to improve levels of service delivery especially to areas identified by the President and the Premier. We do recognise that without significant improved levels of service delivery, we can never claim that our people have access to police and justice system.
Issued by: PWV GAUTENG
For more Information contact:
Mongezi Mnyani - 082 571 3590
Nomvula Khalo - 083 680 6586