AfriForum control room in the Northern region helps to combat crime
AfriForum’s control room for the northern region, which includes Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, in June and July 2021 handled more than 367 incidents and continuously supported the organisation’s neighbourhood watches in these provinces. The purpose of the control room is to assist AfriForum neighbourhood watches by ensuring that help and other necessary resources can be summoned faster.
The incidents that were handled include, among others, 41 missing persons, five farm attacks, 101 rioting incidents and support with 114 stolen vehicles. The AfriForum neighbourhood watches in the three provinces held almost 2 000 patrols in June and July: 781 in Gauteng, 292 in Mpumalanga and 830 in Limpopo. Approximately 2 007 people participated in these patrols.
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“The control room offers overall support to AfriForum neighbourhood watches. Neighbourhood watch members at grassroots level focus more on the tactical side – problems being experienced and solutions for it – where the control room functions more operational to make sure the emergency services are aware of the problems,” says Llewellynn Hemmens, AfriForum’s Head of Community Safety for the northern region.
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“A trend that significantly increased this month was of course the riots that affected everyone. We did however learn a lot of lessons from it and neighbourhood and farm watches were able to implement the necessary contingency plans to aid the authorities. This resulted in us having to adjust the patrols considering that this type of crime usually places a lot of pressure on government institutions with limited resources. We would like to thank the personnel that sacrifice their time every day to make a difference,” adds Hemmens.
