Plan to curb poaching
IF WESTERN Cape police ombudsman Johan Brand has his way, abalone poaching would be classed, alongside rhino poaching, as organised crime and investigated by the Organised Crime Unit of the SAPS.
This was one of the recommendations the ombudsman made in a report handed to community safety MEC Albert Fritz yesterday.
“This report will be presented to the provincial standing committee on community safety, who will further review it,” Brand said.
The report, which deals with a complaint about the poor response from a number of SAPS stations in the Overstrand area, was lodged by the provincial government in May.
The police stations in the complaint, which the ombudsman has substantiated, were at Gansbaai, Kleinmond, Hermanus and Stanford.
The report suggested that the matter of abalone poaching, and the poor response by the stations, be escalated to the national Police Minister Bheki Cele “to address the poor police-to-population ratio and vehicle allocations for detectives in the Overberg cluster”.
Other recommendations made in the report include the establishment of an environmental court and ensuring that the National Integrated Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking be urgently submitted to Cabinet for approval.
The report also recommended that the current policing model be referred to the relevant standing committee, as well as the approach taken by the province to determine whether sector policing is still applied in the province.
The recommendations requested that the MEC for Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Anton Bredell, address the backlog concerning the disposal of abalone at the storage facilities with the national Minister of Environmental Affairs and Fisheries Barbara Creecy; and that the Department of Community Safety should ensure an improvement in the recruitment of accredited neighbourhood watch structures in Overstrand.
The MEC said: “I will work closely with the necessary stakeholders to ensure that these recommendations are reviewed and implemented.”