Cape Town - Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Reagen Allen has said that the province had substantially declined in police resource allocation over the last decade.
This emerged during a briefing by Allen and senior officials of the department to the Community Safety Standing Committee on the progress of its 2022/2023 policing needs and priorities (PNP) report, which evaluates the state of policing in Western Cape.
The department said that whereas the number of SAPS staff in the Western Cape stood at 22 011 in 2011/2012, SAPS numbers stood at 18 867 in 2021/2022 – far below what was needed to police the province.
Speaking after the briefing, committee member Ayanda Bans (ANC) said: “The ANC caucus in the legislature reiterates our calls to SAPS leadership to expedite the process of addressing the skewed allocation of resources so that priority stations are adequately staffed and resourced.”
Bans said the PNP report raised the need to build trust and legitimacy between law enforcement and the people, but that this would not happen as long as the province “stifled and undermined already under-resourced community policing forums (CPFs).
Committee chairperson Gillion Bosman clarified that the presentation was a precursor to the actual PNP report that needs to be tabled with the Office of the Speaker.
“Once that report is tabled, we will then set the wheels in motion for the bigger part of this process to unfold.”
Committee member Ferlon Christians (ACDP) said he was concerned about complaints he had heard from many people about going to a police station to lodge a complaint, only to find that the police officer on duty did not speak their language.
Allen said he had observed the communication issue as a sensitive and tricky one but it was not a barrier to serving in the police.
The PNP report recommended that SAPS members should speak the main languages of a precinct to which they are posted to break down the communication barrier and build trust between communities and police.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za