City of Johannesburg executive mayor Herman Mashaba has welcomed the 1 500 newly recruited JMPD officers.
Mashaba said the city was overwhelmed with 38 600 applications after it announced the JMPD’s intention to recruit 1 500 officers in April.
“JMPD recruits, you are standing here today because the city needs you and you are standing here because the city chose you,” Mashaba told the trainee officers during their induction on October 18.
“Though we are heartened by the vast number of applications we received, we clearly have a massive task ahead of us in tackling unemployment,” he said.
Mashaba said when he took office in August last year, one of the promises he made was that he would capacitate the JMPD so they can police the city’s communities better.
“One of the city’s nine priorities is to ensure safer communities. The JMPD was previously understaffed. The addition of 1 500 new officers represents a 50 per cent increase in the size of JMPD’s force,” he said.
He said the city has allocated R131-million towards increasing the JMPD’s visibility in identified crime hot spots.
“We will be spending R846-million on community safety over the medium term,” he said.
Mashaba said although the city has capacitated the JMPD’s K9 division and introduced better equipment and more powerful cars to the JMPD, the organisation is still not capable of taking full control of crime situations due to restrictions on their powers.
