Mbombela makes room for more traffic officers
The City of Mbombela Local Municipality has advertised space for 50 traffic interns to undergo training at Mpumalanga Traffic College next year to help combat the shortage
MBOMBELA – The City of Mbombela is making plans to increase the number of traffic officers on the streets. This is according to municipal spokesman, David Shabangu.
Lowvelder reported earlier this month that the municipality needed
492 traffic officers to run at full capacity. The local municipality, however, only has 33 officers that service Mbombela, White River Barberton and Hazyview.
Shabangu explained that the municipality calculated the ideal number of officers needed using a formula developed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
“The formula takes into account the number of traffic officers per registered vehicle, number of traffic officers per population and number of traffic officers per kilometre of road,” said Shabangu.
He went on to say that it was used to determine the ideal best case scenario whereby 492 traffic officers are supposed to be deployed across the entire area of jurisdiction of the City of Mbombela.
“The City acknowledged that the full deployment of traffic officers as per the recommendation of the study may not be realised easily as traffic functions must be balanced with our overall constitutional mandate to provide basic services and implement local development programmes.”
The municipality has commenced with the process of recruiting additional traffic officers. Twenty -three traffic students, currently studying at Mpumalanga Traffic College, will start work in January. This will increase the number of traffic officers to 56.
According to Shabangu, the City has also advertised for 50 traffic interns to undergo training at Mpumalanga Traffic College next year.
They will be added to the workforce once they complete their studies increasing the number of officers to 106 within the medium-term period.
