Durban — In joint efforts to bolster the fight against crime in KwaZulu-Natal, provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi led a team of his management and handed over 188 new vehicles to police stations and units on Monday in Truro Hall in Pietermaritzburg.
The vehicles included mobile community service centres (CSC), tow trucks and motorbikes.
Mkhwanazi said that the aim of providing these vehicles was to fight crime and that they would capacitate operational endeavours to keep criminals at bay to maintain peace, stability, and law and order in KZN.
“We are here today to hand over these vehicles. These are typical vehicles that we use as resources to fight crime. These vehicles are each marked for a specific police station, meaning that it is supposed to be used in that police station and not for private use.
“A vehicle that is marked a specific sector states that it is a vehicle dedicated for that sector and it means that, therefore, the communities must receive the services from that car 24/7. So I expect management to show that all these vehicles are used for what they are bought for and they are not for private purposes, and we must look after them to make sure that the members who are driving them take good care of them,” said Mkhwanazi.
He said the department would try to capacitate more vehicles this year.
“We will give more vehicles where there are shortages and different mobile vehicles that are going to be utilised as community service centres.
“We will ensure that these vehicles are available in areas where communities need services and areas where they do not have police stations, and make them available so that they can access the police services.
“Those vehicles that find themselves in distress with breakages and the like, will not need to rely more on private sectors to find tow trucks because we secured our own so that we can be able to have our own recoveries reach where our members are stuck.
“We have had a few incidents in the past, we know we work in a province that is always affected by heavy rain and floods. They can call for recovery trucks to come and help,” said Mkhwanazi.
He urged the police members who will be driving these vehicles to look after them and apply what they were trained to do in the police academy when driving the vehicles and how to be responsible in using the vehicles.
eThekwini district community policing forum (CPF) chairperson Aidan David said the vehicle handover was a good idea and he believed that it would have a good impact on fighting crime.
“This will end the shortage of vehicles in many police stations. It is about time that we get enough cars and they must ensure that these vehicles are distributed to the right sectors and are not abused by the police officials,” said David.
DA provincial spokesperson on community safety, Sharon Hoosen, said any resource towards crime-fighting measures in this province was most welcomed.
“Whilst there is an effort made towards additional vehicles, we hope that the allocation will be done based on where it is needed the most.”
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