CCID brings in more than R11m in fines

BADLY behaved Cape Town residents swelled the city council’s coffers by R11 703 800 in the past year.

The Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) reported at its annual general meeting that the 17 law enforcement officers and 12 traffic officers it funds and contracts via the City’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) had issued 17 587 fines to the value of R11 703 800 since November last year.

A total of 10 891 daytime fines at a value of R7 505 500, 4 176 night-time fines at a value of R2 554 400 and 2 430 fines at a value of R1 643 900 were issued in St Georges Mall and Greenmarket Square, where the CCID and the city are running a pilot project focusing on public safety and urban management.

CCID safety and security manager Muneeb Hendricks said the aim of issuing daytime and night-time fines was to “inculcate a culture of law abidance and provide a consequence for bad behaviour”.

The daytime fines addressed traffic congestion, bad driving and disobedience of simple traffic rules such as parking on red lines, in loading zones and disabled bays which blocked legitimate users from utilising the spaces provided for them.

“We also targeted vehicles that are illegally parked in such a way that they damage infrastructure, such as parking on pavements or across pedestrian areas, thereby damaging curb stones.

“Night-time fines addressed traffic offences such as, vehicles double- parked in lanes causing obstructions, sedan taxis not having the proper permits and law offences, such as club-goers urinating in public and people drinking in public,” said Hendricks.

The transgressions in the informal trading zones of St Georges Mall and Greenmarket Square, said Hendricks, included illegal trading, over-trading, illegal dumping (with fines of up to R10 000), drinking in public, parking in prohibited zones, parking on red lines and breach of outdoor signage by-laws.

The CCID team, said Hendricks, had participated in 107 225 crime prevention initiatives and 1 007 arrests had been made in conjunction with their law enforcement partners.

“By pooling resources with the city (council) and SAPS we become a force to be reckoned with and can achieve much more together than we do apart, and indeed joint integrated operations now occur daily in the CBD,” said Hendricks.

Public safety officers also issued 38 309 warnings for aggressive behaviour that could have escalated to a serious crime, harassment, intimidation, threatening behaviour, blocking doorways or noise-related issues. The warnings were issued prior to law enforcement officers being called in to take legal action.

CCID chief executive Tasso Evangelinos said“something as simple as damage to roads and pavement that are not repaired, illegal dumping that is not picked up and disposed of, graffiti that is never cleaned – these can all be indications that urban blight is setting in”.

“Once you begin to neglect an area, the perception is also that the area is uncared for, quite possibly unsafe and not a place therefore where anyone wants to be or invest in. Therefore dealing with urban blight as soon as it begins is very important to maintaining a successful urban environment,” said Evangelinos.

When it came to social development, the challenges included homelessness, poverty, youth disenfranchisement and “also general communications challenges in terms of educating the public around crime prevention, the promotion of investment and diversification of the economy, the call for creating social cohesion and changing mindsets around sustainability and the use of resources”.

There was much that the public did not see, said Evangelinos. Besides the 24/7 presence of the CCID public safety officers, crews cleaned the city throughout the night.

“Were it not for these dedi- cated teams, the central city would look very, very different in the morning when office workers enter the city. Not only due to the clean up that needs to happen after people have been partying or as a result of events that take place at night, but to the high volumes of illegal dumping that regularly occur when culprits take their chances.”

With the city centre experiencing high homelessness, the CCID social development team had developed programmes with partners which provided assistance to homeless people such as safes for their belongings, meals, work on the cleaning or gardening crews and specially designed winter sleeping bags.

The work crews cleaned 20 704 municipal drains and 3 189 storm water drains and channels, replaced 180 drain covers, removed 13 178 strings and stickers and 3 398 graffiti tags, undertook 955 road maintenance repairs, painted 1 064 road markings, removed 1 625kg of cigarette butts from CCID’s branded cigarette bins, removed 28 840kg waste to landfill and maintained 2 698 tree wells and trimmed 42 trees, said Evangelinos.

‘Social