DA lashes out at ‘crocked’ Centurion cop cars

Eight broken down vehicles at the Wierdabrug police station in Centurion was a great concern to the DA, Pretoria Rekord reports.

Most of the vehicles had flat tyres while some have no tyres at all.

“This hampers service delivery at Wierdabrug police station in Centurion,” Michael Shackleton MPL, DA Gauteng spokesperson for community safety said. Shackleton said the DA had noted with “great concern” the vehicles had been parked at the police station “for months”, instead of being sent for repairs.

He said the station did not have adequate vehicles for patrols and crime prevention. “Most of these broken-down vehicles are police vans which are used for patrols to prevent crime and to attend to crime scenes,” he said.

“It is worrying that while our police stations do not have sufficient vehicles there are still broken vehicles parked on police premises instead of immediately being sent to a mechanical workshop for repairs.”

The DA called on community safety MEC Faith Mazibuko and provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Elias Mawela to ensure that these broken vehicles were sent for repairs to ensure that service delivery was not severely affected.

“We will also table questions in the Gauteng provincial legislature to ascertain the number of police vehicles at this station and the reasons why these broken vehicles have not been sent for repairs.”

Police spokesperson Brigadier Mathapelo Peters said that eight of 11 vehicles at Wierdabrug police station recently were fitted with new tyres last week Wednesday, while the application for three remaining vehicles was receiving attention.

“At no stage has this impacted negatively on service delivery,” Peters said.