CAPE TOWN – The city of Cape Town wants to use drones to help tackled land occupation as it estimates 100 000 people need to relocated.
Petrus Robbie Roberts, acting executive director for the City’s Safety and Security Directorate, said half of the 78 housing projects within Cape Town were disrupted by land occupation.
Roberts said 14 547 incidents of land occupation had occurred since January. There had been 395 arrests and 106 court orders had been issued.
He said they identified more than 500 hotspots within the metropolitan and that eviction orders were issued in terms of the Disaster Management Act.
Roberts said they had notified the metropolitan law enforcement as well as the police.
He said there were 23 873 occupied structures that were built on land which belonged to the City of Cape Town, private land or the national institutions such as Eskom.
He said the number of people that needed homes remains high. Roberts said they used the criminal law in terms of the Trespass Act and that he had already signed a total of 241 applications to get people evicted.
“If you are looking at an average of five persons per structure, we are talking about nearly 100 000 people that need to be relocated,” he said.
He said they have established a coordinating committee as they were attending to the land occupation daily and continued to monitor hotspots. They were trying to get drones to assist them.
Before the implementation of the Disaster Management Act, the recorded number of the abolished structures stood at 35 537. They have abolished 68110 structures.
He continued by saying the city has put an emphasis on land occupation to prevent and deal with it,.