The severe lack of vehicles hamstrung police’s ability to prevent and probe crime effectively in Boksburg and across the province.
Michael Shackleton MPL – DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for community safety, said the vehicles available to officers at the police stations do not meet the service requirement, as 2170 police vehicles in the province are out-of-service.
“This is an increase of 763 out-of-service vehicles compared to last year November, where 1407 police vehicles were unavailable,” said Shackleton.
According to Shackleton, this information was revealed by police minister Bheki Cele in March in a reply to a written DA question in the National Assembly.
The DA in Gauteng is calling on Cele and the Gauteng MEC for community safety Faith Mazibuko to ensure that the 2170 police vehicles that are out of service are immediately attended to and brought back to their respective police stations.
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Boksburg SAPS
Police sources at the Boksburg police station, who spoke to the Advertiser on condition of anonymity, attested to the DA claims.
They expressed their dissatisfactions with SAPS management’s failure to address the shortage of resources, saying this restrict officers from doing their work efficiently.
“We always struggle just to get vehicles, off-road vehicles, in particular, to attend to complaints in certain areas that are difficult to access with sedan or hatchback cars. This undermines the response capacity of police and weakens the detectives’ investigative process,” said one of the concerned officers.
Benoni comes second and is followed by Springs on the list of stations with the highest number of out of service vehicles.
Stations with the highest number of out of service vehicles:
Vereeniging Police Station: 100
Benoni Police Station: 82
Springs police station: 65
Protea Glen Police station: 58
Silverton Police Station: 54
Midrand Police Station: 53
Johannesburg Central Police Station: 50.
Increased command in fleet management
According to Shackleton, the police minister stated that his department had increase command and control in terms of fleet management, and has deployed artisans from other garages to adequately address the high number of out of service vehicles.
“Further to this, the department is also using a global financial authority to purchase bulk stock.
“A situational analysis has been conducted in terms of mechanical transport to compile an operational risk and mitigation strategy to increase the number of operational vehicles.”
Monitored
“We will continue to monitor the progress of the current interventions to ensure that our police stations each have a sufficient number of operational vehicles,” said Shackleton.
“We lastly call on Cele to ensure that the current mitigation strategy that has been implemented and reviewed regularly to assess whether it is yielding any positive results.”
Questions concerning the shortages of vehicles in the province, including when will the broken down vehicles be attended to and returned in working order to their police stations, and how many vehicles are out of order or required at the Boksburg police stations, remain unanswered.
Also Read: Minister of Police calls on public to report poor service delivery
