Parliament - Accredited neighbourhood watches may patrol their areas after curfew, the Western Cape member of the executive council (MEC) for community safety Albert Fritz said on Tuesday.
Fritz said those who have obtained permits from the department of community safety to perform the patrol during Covid-19 lockdown level 3, qualified to carry on doing so in terms of the regulation that pertains to the new night-time curfew that took effect on Monday.
The amended regulation gazetted on Sunday evening states that: "Every person is confined to his or her place of residence from 9pm until 4am daily, except where a person has been granted a permit, which corresponds with Form 2 of Annexure A, to perform a service permitted under alert level 3, or is attending to a security or medical emergency.”
Fritz said the department has been issuing permits to neighbourhood watches since June 8, days after Deputy National Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Sehlahle Masemola gave the green light for the structures to resume operations as the country moved from lockdown alert level 4 to 3.
Fritz said it was important that neighbourhood watches continued to patrol after curfew began because criminals were active at night.
"It is essential that neighbourhood watches continue to patrol during the curfew hours as we know that these are the times in which crimes such as robberies and burglaries take place.”
He said those who were uncertain whether they had proper accreditation could contact the neighbourhood watch unit of the department of safety.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday night announced the new curfew as part of efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19 after the number of confirmed cases in the country soared to more than a quarter of a million.
- African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Devereaux Morkel