ANY government that is not willing to fight crime, corruption, lawlessness and vandalism doesn’t deserve the title of “government”.
These were the words of Premier Panyaza Lesufi while addressing Eldorado Park residents in the south of Joburg.
Lesufi and members of the Executive Council visited Eldorado Park on Tuesday, 18 October, with aim of finding solutions to the challenges faced by the community such as drugs, crime and service delivery.
The community has been on a protest since 11 September, demanding that all the relevant partners should come and engage them regarding their problems.
Residents complained that there is an increase in crime, drugs and gang-related shootings in their area.
One of the residents said that Satan has been running Eldorado Park for too long.
As a result, the community is used to witnessing lawlessness in the area.
Freedom Park residents requested for a police station to be built in their area.
“Premier, we do not have a police station in Freedom Park. We use the one in Eldos and it’s a bit far for us,’ said a resident.
Touching on the issue of drugs, another resident said charity begins at home.
“We are the ones responsible for our children’s actions. If they smoke or take drugs and disaster happens, why do we then complain?” she said.
Community Safety MEC Faith Mazibuko committed to delivering a mobile police station for the people of Freedom Park.
Premier Lesufi promised that they will strengthen measures to fight crime.
“If we can’t go big on fighting crime, we must just forget it,” he said.
He said the department, led by MEC Mazibuko, has a budget of R500 million to fight crime, but the new administration is changing that to R8 billion.
“We have three strategies to fight crime. The first one being e-security and that is using the power of technology to fight criminals.
“We have declared that there must be no area in Gauteng that is not covered by height technology face recognition CCTVs so that we can cover every inch of all our communities.
“To fight crime, we must recruit those who are brave. We are proud to say that we are allocating R2,4 billion to recruit 6 000 brave young men and women who will be monitoring crime,” he said.
He further said that Gauteng will invest e-panic buttons to help alleviate crime.
