These include everything from petty theft to violent crime; crimes committed due to victims’ negligence and crime with intent.
Crime stories always generate the most hits on our websites and spark the most debate on social networking sites. The community often wants to know about crime trends and how to avoid them as far as possible.
Some members of the community have created their own crime forum groups to keep track of crimes in the Midrand precinct.
But when it comes to support of crime prevention meetings for domestic workers, the support just isn’t there.
Someone who is focusing on domestic workers, however, is Penny Steyn. She founded the Making A Difference campaign to educate domestic workers about how to prevent crime, remember emergency numbers, and help to create a security network within suburbs. In the areas where the meetings do take place, crime statistics have been significantly lowered, with the support of a joint crime-awareness network.
Midrand police constantly remind us that all sectors of the community need to know crime prevention tips, and they warn, “If you are not part of the solution, you could be part of the problem.”
In the Midrand area, the only suburb that requests Steyn’s services is Sun Valley, and while any domestic worker from any area is welcome to attend the meetings, it seems a shame that more areas do not insist on hosting meetings such as these. It is, after all, the domestic workers who are often left to care for their employers’ homes and children.
The lack of support is not unique to Midrand, as this kind of apathy can be found throughout Johannesburg. The common reason being that employers don’t want to give their domestic workers an hour off to attend the meetings.
In this kind of apathetic climate, we have to ask, “How can we hope to lower crime statistics by doing nothing?”. What it really boils down to is this: if you could help prevent a crime, why wouldn’t you?
