This calls for an intervention
A community lives in fear while whoongo-fuelled addicts run rampant across the Berea committing crimes to feed their addiction.
NEWSPAPER headlines, social media timelines and e-mails galore over the past couple of weeks are highlighting the extremely serious problem the so called whoonga addicts are causing across the Berea and its suburbs. In any other family, the situation would call for a intervention of gigantic proportions. Everyone agrees, addiction is a disease and the addict needs help and treatment. Even our erstwhile city fathers agree.
On 30 April Berea Mail ran a story quoting Head of Communications, Tozi Mthethwa who waxed lyrical about the Safer Cities Unit which had established outreach programmes and were active at King DinuZulu Park three days a week tending to the homeless who were booted out of Albert Park and merely moved on to newer pastures at King DinuZulu (the old Berea) Park.
Here, the homeless supposedly receive assistance from social workers who are also substance abuse counsellors, and those in need of medical care are sent off to local eThekwini health clinics. Those who wish to be rehabilitated are taken to rehab centres and depending on their level of addiction and withdrawal symptoms, are referred to hospital. Which, on paper all sounds good but I am left wondering if it is enough.
Residents across the Berea bear the brunt of the problem. They are the victims of crimes committed by the homeless so desperate for their next fix that they cannot be deterred by locked doors, bolted gates or security measures. Not even the threat of police can light the flame of reason and sanity within them. The community has every reason to be concerned, to feel threatened and unsafe. It is ludicrous to think that a wretched group of vagabonds are able to hold a community in the grip of fear.
Something has to give, and its not the whoonga. This week we carried our first story of how this problem is affecting our community. Businesswoman and long-time resident, Andrea Lipschitz is a casualty of the out-of-control whoonga-fuelled crime problem that has washed over Berea. She’s the first we know of to surrender and move out. She won’t be the last.
This can’t be allowed to go on … we need an intervention now!
