Authorities in the North West are looking at setting up their own community policing unit similar to Gauteng’s crime wardens popularly known as Amapanyaza.
The North West Provincial Legislature together with the provincial department for community safety and transport have put together a joint delegation to visit at least three provinces to benchmark their crime prevention methods and systems.
On Friday the team met their Gauteng counterparts at the legislature in Gauteng where they were taken through presentations on how the province’s crime prevention wardens programme was conceptualised, budgeted for and executed.
Chairperson of the North West Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Community Safety and Transport Freddy Sonakile led the delegation and said the visits followed determination that the North West needed to augment its current crime fighting capability if it was to bring safety to residents.
“ We are on a benchmarking exercise in Gauteng. It is part of the operational plan of the committee that I am chairing. Particularly we had targeted three provinces, Gauteng, Western Cape and Mpumalanga as they already have have provincial type of police there that are operating,” said Sonakile.
Sonakile said the team was looking to learn on areas such as budgeting and legislation that the province could rely on to set up its own policing force.
“ The aim is to check how they function, the budgeting there of, how it’s done, where are we getting it wrong as a province. We also want to check legislation that they used to set up their policing structures. You’ll remember that policing is a national function so if you have a provincial type of community policing kind of structure how does it work,” he said.
After listening to presentations by among others the Head of Department at the Community Safety Department Nontsikelelo Sisulu, the North West delegation expressed concern that setting up a policing force came at great financial cost and Bandile Masuku who chairs the Gauteng provincial legislature’s committee on safety and led proceedings during Friday’s meeting said Gauteng had also had issues with the cost but said it was certainly doable.
“Yes it keeps rising but I think with a better plan which is better cost it becomes reasonable. We know the benefit of fighting crime on the economy and it would make it better in the long run, it would be cheaper and look at it as an investment than any other thing so we are looking at the cost, the budget as managed by the department,” said Masuku.
Gauteng’s crime wardens have established themselves in the province’s cities and townships as the government tries curb criminality in the most populous province.
