Cape Town - In its response to the rampant crime plaguing the Cape Flats, the EFF in the metro launched a patrol programme at the weekend in Mitchells Plain, aiming to restore safety in communities.
Informed by engagements which the party said were undertaken in 2014 which revealed safety to be the number one concern, the programme would be rolled out to other areas in the metro, including Manenberg, Hanover Park, Athlone, Langa and Khayelitsha.
The party said EFF on Patrol was one of many intervention programmes that would be rolled out within drug and gang-infested communities across the Cape Flats.
Regional treasurer Aishah Cassiem said all patrollers strictly came from launched party branches across the Cape metro and would target several crime hot spots, schools, bus stops and other public facilities, to ensure the safety of residents. She said the patrollers would undergo training and vetting with relevant authorities before being approved to participate in the programme.
“While the programme was established after residents had highlighted the continuous lack of intervention from the SAPS and Law Enforcement who fail to patrol daily within the area, even LEAP and SAPS officials themselves had stopped their vans, on the day, to thank us for starting the initiative and lending a hand to the community,” said Cassiem.
EFF MP Nazier Paulsen said crime in poorer communities could not be policed away and that structural issues that contributed to crime had to be addressed.
Paulsen said the programme was not to undermine the work of police or law-enforcement but to work in partnership while ensuring that law-enforcement agencies were held accountable on crime in communities.
“In poorer communities, incidents of contact crimes are higher as compared to the more affluent areas and we must do something in our communities because police resources are also given to these better-off areas.
“In the Western Cape the MEC of Community Safety and Police Oversight is more concerned about getting policing devolved to the province than holding the SAPS to account for poor performance in poor communities,” Paulsen said.
Resident Fatima Daniels said it was about time the community received assistance from political parties too as law-enforcement and police at times failed to intervene in certain parts of their community where drug and gang activities occur daily.