Plumbing problem at Plettenberg Bay police cells
PLETTENBERG BAY - The Plettenberg Bay and KwaNokuthula police stations are completely inadequate to protect the residents in their communities. This was the conclusion of the Western Cape provincial standing committee on community safety after a two-day oversight visit to the town last week.
"We will invite the National Minister of Police, the Provincial Minister for Community Safety and Police Oversight and the SAPS Western Cape Provincial Commissioner to an urgent meeting of the standing committee on community safety to discuss the state of policing infrastructure in the Bitou area," said Western Cape spokesperson on community safety Gillion Bosman, MPP - DA.
"Upon visiting the Plettenberg Bay Police
Station on Tuesday, it was found that this station does not have functional plumbing or flushing toilets in the detention cells, despite being renovated in 2013," said Bosman.
He said staff had to manually unblock drains to ensure that toilets were functioning. The room where evidence and exhibits are kept, does not have any ventilation and poses a direct health hazard to police members.
"Additionally, there are no wheelchair ramps or ramp access points, even though it is built on three different levels. The lifts were also not working while various fire extinguishers were discovered to be broken and defective.
"It has reached the point where staff at the station had even listed a myriad of complaints, which included not having a functioning photocopying machine in the Client Service Centre (charge office)," said Bosman.
The committee also assessed the quality of services provided at the KwaNokuthula Police Station,which covers the KwaNokuthula community as well as residents in Kranshoek 20km away.
"It became very clear that the police station is completely inadequate and not fit as a place of work for these hardworking police members. The only brick and mortar building on the property is only able to house a small charge office and the station commander's office. All other policing services are offered from old and broken prefabs, where the case files are kept in a shipping container and where there is insufficient space to store documents and exhibits," said Bosman.
"We cannot have a situation where there are holes in the ground of old shipping containers being used as a police station for the community. SAPS needs to urgently address the lack of detention facilities at both KwaNokuthula and Plettenberg Bay police stations. The working conditions and infrastructure are not suitable for these professionals and it further reflects the failure of our centralised police system."