Police yet to implement commission’s recommendations
POLICE are falling behind their targets in keeping Khayelitsha residents and surrounding communities safe when it comes to community policing, a seminar advocating human dignity has heard.
The seminar, which was held last week at the University of the Western Cape, was attended by more than 100 people and organisations. It was themed “towards resourcing for effective community policing”.
Speakers said the people living in the townships were suffering the most as a result of the police’s inability to implement recommendations of a commission that looked at policing in Khayelitsha.
The commission’s recommendations were that the provincial complaints mechanism be implemented by police with regards to domestic violence cases.
It also recommended an establishment of a multi-sectoral task team to address the problem of youth gangs in Khayelitsha.
Fairouz Nagia-Luddy, of Ndifuna Ukwazi, said the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into Policing found that the police’s allocation of policing resources was “unfair and irrational”.
She said police management concentrated their resources in safer and more affluent areas rather than in informal settlements and poor working-class areas.
Nagia-Luddy said she had told the seminar that “the commission of inquiry recommended that the resources allocation system be revised, not just for Khayelitsha, but on a national level”.
In Khayelitsha and surrounding areas, poverty, child mortality, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation were the problems, she said.
Nagia-Luddy painted a grim picture, saying in the townships the police were falling behind in reaching the recommendations of the Khayelitsha commission, despite it being over a year since the recommendations were tabled to the police.
She said the gap between wealth and poverty was on the increase.
“We are not seeing any commitment from the police and the City. They (City and police) need to ensure there is a link between government and the public. They have to take the recommendations seriously,” she said.
“We are raising our voices and frustrations. There are not enough police in Khayelitsha and other (surrounding) townships like Nyanga,” said Nagia- Luddy. Chairperson of the Community Policing Forum cluster Hanif Loonat said: “It is important that the ministry of police take policing seriously because we are more proactive than other law enforcement agencies.”
Ewald Botha, speaking on behalf of community safety MEC Dan Plato, said: “Despite an increase in the budget and human resources allocated to police at national level, the resources at station level, especially in the Western Cape, have decreased over the last four years.”
Police had not responded to a request for comment by deadline.