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Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to your quarterly review session. I am happy that this engagement is happening during the month of September when we celebrate Integrated Public Service Month. The Integrated Public Service Month is an opportunity for all public servants take stock of our how we serve our communities and whether the communities that we serve are happy with our performance. If the community that we serve are not significantly satisfied, we need to go back to the drawing board and double our efforts on how we can improve our service offering.
Visible Policing is an important part of Policing in General because we all know that Police Visibility serves as a deterrent for crime. We indeed need to continuously strengthen our resolve and remain steadfast to ensure we win the fight against crime. Colleagues, the issue of performance is quite important and I cannot overemphasize enough the role Visible Policing plays in crime prevention.
This engagement comes a week after the Minister released the crime stats for the past two quarters. Of great concern is that Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and the Eastern Cape currently account for 73% of crime levels in the country. The phenomenon of extortions is a serious concern which we need to deal with once and for all. Extortion has been an emerging crime trend overtime and it has now infiltrated in many communities, rearing its ugly head and various business people are living in fear and many are closing their businesses and entrepreneurial activities where they are based, which has a ripple effect in communities. We take note that KwaZulu-Natal is waging war on crime and act decisively to protect themselves and community members where their lives are under threat. We have seen similar incidents in the Western Cape and in Mpumalanga. Colleagues, we need to come up with decisive strategies on what we are going to do to address the issue of crime and ensure that all people in South Africa are and feel safe.
We note that various crime categories are going up and this requires us to intensify our pushback against criminality. Vispol and operations cannot be sitting in air-conditioned offices because yours really is to be out on the streets. You need to be seen not only on big cities but also in small farming towns, townships, villages and all informal settlements. It cannot be business as usual when criminals are terrorizing communities. South Africa cannot be a playground for criminals and certainly not under our watch. We need to work together with other specialized units such as the Special Task Force and Counter Assault Teams, NIU, POP and Mobile Operations , K-9 units where the situation calls for it so that we should protect community members and ourselves, then, let it be so.
The high number of people murdered remains a concern because in the last quarter, we have seen a total of 6 918 people killed in our country. Although this number has gone down by 30 as compared to the corresponding quarter in the 2023, this is still high
Vispol is ideally placed to ensure that community members whom we serve, feel the heartbeat of the SAPS because you are responsible for delivering the bulk of everyday police services to the public and can easily report crime to you when they see you going about your duties in their communities.
In conclusion, I must say that I have no doubt that every single province is well equipped with resources to be able to deal with crime in its province. Suffice to say, resources will never be enough but we must use whatever little resources we have to win the fight against crime.
I thank you!
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