DURBAN - KWAZULU-NATAL violence monitor Mary de Haas says police will continue to struggle to contain crime in KwaZulu-Natal because of a poor turnaround time in repairing their vehicles.
She was reacting to revelations by Community Safety MEC Peggy Nkonyeni that a minor battery replacement took more than two weeks, with major repairs taking three months in some instances.
In a written parliamentary reply to DA Member of the Provincial Legislature Sharon Hoosen, it was revealed that some of KZN busiest police stations waited for weeks, and even months, for repairs to their vehicles.
With KZN featuring highly in the recent crime statistics, De Haas said there should be a greater sense of urgency in doing repair work to enable police to do their work. According to the MEC’s response, at Inanda police station a minor engine repair took 53 days, a minor brake overhaul 72 days, and an electrical starting fault 113 days. At uMlazi police station, battery replacement took 19 days, minor brake system repair 36 days, electric ignition repair 42 days, electrical accessories and wiring 130 days and minor bodywork 154 days.
In Plessislaer police station, one of Pietermaritzburg’s busiest precincts, windscreen repairs took 36 days, minor brake system repairs 40 days, electric accessories and wiring 106 days and minor brake system repairs 121 days.
According to Hoosen the information illustrates the hopeless inadequacies that exist within SAPS. “It also begs the question of how many vehicles are on the ground at any given time, keeping our communities safe.”
She said the real travesty was that lives were constantly lost in the province as a result of a lack of police visibility, which was being compounded by a scarcity of the vital resource of a vehicle.
Hoosen said the findings were in stark contrast to the provincial government’s promises that it was dedicated to fixing and redirecting SAPS resources.
“It is clear that urgent interventions are needed for the sake of our communities who are in dire need of a safe and crime-free province.”
De Haas said the problem of vehicle maintenance had long plagued the police, adding that it showed lack of management at senior levels of the police. “That is one of the reasons why the province has such high crime statistics, because the availability of police vehicles has a great impact on the swiftness of police in responding to a reported crime. If you do not have vehicles, you cannot go after criminals.”
While noting that the reported stations were in townships, she expressed fear that the situation was worse at stations in rural areas.
“What ought to be done is to determine who at the top level of the SAPS is responsible for vehicle maintenance and make sure they do their job, because this should not be allowed to happen. If the problem is not attended to we will continue lamenting the high crime rate and the police’s slow response.”
De Haas also noted that while the SAPS did not report to MEC Nkonyeni, she still had to exercise her department’s oversight on the police as they are under her portfolio.
Attempts to get comment from the department were unsuccessful.
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