Numerous reports have been received from residents who complain about response time from Ladysmith SAPS when incidents of crime are reported.
Residents contend that the long delay from the time an incident of crime is reported to the time the police arrive is simply unacceptable. At times the complainants have to wait hours if not days for the police to make their presence.
A pensioner’s home was broken into in the Egerton area and the complainant reported the case at Ladysmith police station, police officers arrived at his home after two weeks to investigate!
The complainant feels there is a lack of interest shown by the “men in blue” after his hard-earned possessions were stolen from his garage and will probably never be recovered.
In another incident of poor policing, a suspect managed to escape while being booked at the police station.
While waiting for a police van to take the suspect to Besters SAPS for detention due to renovations at Ladysmith police station, the suspect managed to get out of his handcuffs and run away.
Luckily, he was re-arrested by police.
A further incident occurred last week on Monday, when residents of Daffodil Crescent caught a suspect red handed as he was stealing a tool box.
They contacted the police at around 8am but a police vehicle arrived about five hours later.
The matter was brought to the attention of the Uthukela Cluster Commander, Major General TE Gonya.
He commented that, “We wish to assure the community that we take service delivery seriously in the Uthukela Cluster and we thank the community for coming forward to alert us of the existence of shortcomings.”
He added, “We will not accept shoddy work from any person and thus we would like the opportunity to investigate the matter, which will also allow us the opportunity to prevent a re-occurrence.”
“To this end, a senior police officer has been appointed to conduct a detailed investigation into the allegations raised.”
“Police are allocated adequately according to challenges we are faced with and in future, if the community is not satisfied with the services received from the Community Service Centres (CSC) throughout the Cluster, they are at liberty to make contact directly with the station commander of that station in order for us to be able to respond quickly and effectively to complaints received from the community.”
In Ladysmith, the Acting Station Commander, Colonel Mngadi, can be reached on 0796963491
For the full story get your copy of the Ladysmith Gazette newspaper.
Click to receive news links via WhatsApp. Or for the latest news, visit our webpage or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Join us there!
