Pretoria - Residents may no longer have to deal with the inconvenience of police stations being closed due to Covid-19 when all 37 000 members of the police take the Pfizer vaccine.
This was the hope of MEC for Community Safety Faith Mazibuko and provincial police commissioner lieutenant-general Elias Mawela who led the rollout of the vaccine in Tshwane at the Pretoria Moot police station.
With 92 police members having already succumbed to coronavirus from over 700 members who tested positive, Mazibuko said the government was happy the police were finally receiving their vaccines because they interact and touch people as part of their work.
Mazibuko said she was pleased with the turn out of members of the police from officials to support staff like administration officials who parked their cars in the designated parking and the streets to receive their first jab as the rollout commenced in Tshwane.
She said: "We all know that these are frontline workers. These are officials who engage with a lot of people and they are high risk because you know we have police officers who have to man roadblocks and those who have to react to situations in communities.
"That means they will have to interact with people and end up arresting and cuffing people and that is why we are at ease today when they are being vaccinated. They come into contact with a lot of people while doing their work“.
Speaking about the hundreds of members who tested positive since Covid-19 hit the shores of South Africa, Mawela said management was happy that many of the officials recovered and were back on duty.
However, he said: "We still have so many police officers who are still in isolation and it is a very big number. We have identified 15 sites approved by our head office. We believe they will manage to cater for the numbers we have here on the ground“.
Constable Munyadziwa Ramovha from Bronkhorstspruit police station came to vaccinate and encourage her colleagues to also receive their jab because she nearly lost her life to coronavirus last year in December after she tested positive for Covid-19.
"This virus is real and it is dangerous. I was struggling to do things for myself and it was so painful. I am feeling blessed and lucky to be one of the officers who survived," she added.
Pretoria News