Schools safety boost after abductions
DBE and police working together to raise awareness of risks to learners
THE SAPS and the Department of Basic Education (DBE) have put measures in place to raise awareness about violence and kidnappings in schools.
This as Police Minister Bheki Cele identified Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, North West, and the Western Cape, as hot spot provinces, in which pupils get kidnapped from school.
In a written Parliamentary reply to DA MP Ntombi Khumalo, who enquired about collaborative interventions undertaken by the SAPS and DBE, Cele said that the two departments have completed the process of reviewing the School Safety Protocol, which guides the implementation of School Safety Programmes, aimed at promoting safer schools, nationally.
“There are various crime awareness campaigns, which are implemented and conducted, by the SAPS, at schools to address, among other things, incidents of bullying and gangsterism among pupils, in and around school premises. Currently, there is a National School Safety Violence and Bullying Prevention Initiative that is being implemented in response to the emerging incidents of bullying and violence, by pupils, on and off school premises.
“The SAPS also has a flagship project called the Junior Commissioner Project, which is being implemented from Grades eight to 12. Junior commissioners are appointed in schools to lead crime-prevention campaigns, under the mentorship of the SAPS. Junior commissioners are also participating in school safety committees in their areas,” he said.
Cele said awareness campaigns, which focus on the kidnapping of learners going to and from school, are conducted on an ongoing basis – with multidisciplinary investigation teams having been established in the hot spot provinces.
Cele said, for the investigation of kidnapping cases, the multidisciplinary teams make use of the arrest of identified persons, centralisation of case dockets for investigation purposes, centralisation of case dockets for trial in court, and prosecutor-directed investigations with the National Prosecution Authority (NPA), and collection and analysis of data and information received on the cases that are investigated by the multidisciplinary teams.
He added that this intervention has resulted in a decrease in the kidnapping of learners.