New police stations to replace containers

Police management have presented a plan for the construction of four police stations in the Western Cape.

This emerged during a briefing to the Western Cape legislature’s committee on safety, sport and culture on Friday.

A SAPS delegation led by national commissioner General Fannie Masemola outlined the police’s plans for upgrades and construction of station in the Western Cape.

Kwanokuthula in Plettenberg Bay, Kleinvlei in Eerste River, Kwanonqaba in Mossel Bay and Elands Bay on the West Coast were identified for upgrades and signed off on by the provincial commissioner in consultation with the MEC in the province.

Kwanokuthula is regarded as a fully fledged police station and is leased from the Bitou Municipality. However, 90% of the building consists of park homes and containers whose flooring is decaying. The lease is scheduled to end in 2028.

Kleinvlei station is state owned but accommodated in a three-room house. The detectives and administration services are accommodated in park homes.

Elands Bay police station on the West Coast is made up of prefabricated structures and containers.

Kwanonqaba is leased from the Mossel Bay Municipality. It consists of two small buildings and a number of prefabricated structures. It’s contract expires in 2014.

The SAPS envisaged completing the construction in six years as all four projects have yet to reach the planning and design stages.

The committee’s chairperson, Gillion Bosman, said a recent site visit to Kwanokuthula’s police station found that it did not have functional plumbing or flushing toilets in the detention cells, despite being renovated in 2013.

Bosman said oversight visits to police stations revealed that at a station level the SAPS did not have the capacity to maintain their stations.

Members of the committees said the station commander’s office was the only brick and mortar building on the property, while all other policing services are offered from old and broken prefab structures.

Case files are also allegedly kept in a shipping container.

Bosman said the three other stations, were poorly equipped. Some didn’t even have detention cells and proper charge offices.

“Some are still apartheid era stations with no infrastructure investment. There is general confusion at station level as to who is responsible for maintaining police stations, repairing badly built police stations and no procedure to communicate repairs,” he said.

“We also found that there is not clear administration space and also very badly set up victim support rooms.

“The intervention needs to look at the quality of work delivered, these police stations either need an upgrade or SAPS should use the land provided by municipalities.”

Masemola said 29 security upgrades were completed in police stations across the province in the last financial year, including the installation of CCTV cameras, electronic gates for vehicles, security gates, access control systems and fencing. An estimated R2.8 million has been earmarked for security upgrades at priority stations for the current financial year.

MEC for community safety and policing oversight, Reagen Allen said his department facilitated the compiling of the Policing Needs and Priorities (PNP) report that looked at the state of police stations in the province.

The 2020/2021 report found that the SAPS leased 18% of its stations and rented 18 of its 30 satellite stations. It also highlighted how some of the province’s 151 police stations were in need of refurbishments.

“Some police stations are in dire need of upgrading. Issues of concern include insufficient office space, storage space, unhygienic and unsafe working conditions,“ said Allen.

“At some stations it was reported that the SAPS do not have sufficient resources, especially holding cells. I have written to the national minister of public works and infrastructure and sadly, have not received a reply.”

Communities in Samora Machel, Makhaza and Tafelsig have also been waiting for the construction of new police stations as budgets have been allocated. Stations like Gugulethu, Lingelethu West and Lwandle, whose operations are conducted in shipping containers, are also on a waiting list.

Masemola also touched on the recent child murders and the increase in kidnappings in the Western Cape.

He said while they did not receive the committee’s questions regarding the 27 child murders in the last quarter, he had noted that SAPS does have the capacity to deal with investigations linked to crime against women and children.

“The Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) unit has one of the most successful convictions (rates) countrywide.

“With regards to kidnapping, and kidnapping for ransom, we hope to nip it in the bud in due course. This crime has gripped the country at large. We managed to get a grip on it in other provinces but in the Western Cape it is still a problem but we are now using the same strategy to win it, so it can yield the same results as the rest of the country,” he said.

On Friday night, Ukrainian woman Anichka Penev was reunited with her family after she was kidnapped on September 29 in Blackheath.