The local policing forum in Elsies River is worried about the escalation of crime in the precinct.
After a relatively calm festive season, which saw most crime categories stabilise, and even improve, there has been a dramatic resurgence of violent crimes during late January and early February, says Elsies River CPF spokesperson Imraahn Mukkaddam.
“We have seen an increase in criminal activity insofar as robberies of commuters, especially smash and grabs and the targeting of Uber and Bolt drivers,” he said.
“We have launched awareness campaigns to inform residents and travellers of the dangers and the location of hot spots. The failure of all our law-enforcement agencies in curbing the scourge of smash-and-grabs in our areas is indicative of the fact that Elsies River and surrounds are not prioritised, and that there is a disproportionate allocation of resources both on the part of the police as well as the City of Cape Town.”
According to Mukkadam the area was also experiencing a resurgence of gang-related violence with shooting incidents increasing daily.
“In a number of instances innocent bystanders have been injured or killed. Our analysis of crime patterns have shown that the increased criminal activity coincides with the reopening of schools after the summer holidays.
“We have noticed the robberies and smash-and-grabs are being perpetrated by youth of school-going age. The high number of school drop-outs who have not returned to school, this year appears to be contributing to this escalation.
“The Elsies River Community Policing Forum is also concerned about the increase in gang-related shooting incidents throughout our precinct. Despite the recovery of a number of firearms by Elsies River police there is a proliferation of guns in our area. Gun battles that involve multiple shooters have become more frequent with the consequent loss of life and injuries.”
Action demanded
He said he the community refuses to live under siege by criminals and demand swift and immediate action by all the law-enforcement agencies.
“We demand that our local police station be adequately resourced with sufficient manpower and vehicles so effective policing can be maintained.
“Furthermore, we demand that the City of Cape Town deploy more of its law-enforcement capacity to our area as we are often overlooked when resources are allocated. We also appeal for funding to be made available so that our community safety structures can be deployed to all the hotspots as was done with considerable success in the past.
“Lastly, we appeal for calm in our community and that adults and parents must ensure that children are out of harms way when violence does occur.”
Bronagh Hammond, spokesperson for the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), said she was not sure how dropouts correlate with crime.
“Are they attributing crime to a certain age cohort of people that should be in school? It isn’t clear. So I really can only speak in general about dropouts.
‘drop outs’
“The WCED cannot provide credible analysis for the drop-out rate as some learners ‘drop out’ of the system due to pregnancy, societal issues or health.
“Other learners may leave a school for a variety of reasons, including relocation to another province or country, further study at an FET college, home-schooling options or private institutions.
“These learners cannot be deemed dropouts from the education system.”
Therefore, she says, the WCED does not actively track or report on learner dropouts, as there are multiple reasons not necessarily deemed as dropping out of the schooling system.
“If we are to consider learner retention rates, the learner retention rates for Grades 1 to 8 (2016-2022) in the Western Cape was 92,8%.
“In Grades 8 to 12 (2018 -2022) it was 71,9%. This is an improvement from pre-Covid-19 rates, with retention at 87,1% in 2019 for Grade 1 to 7 and 67,4% in 2019 for Grade 8 to 12. We are therefore keeping more learners in the system.
“The remaining learners, as indicated, could have left for a variety of reasons, as described above.”
The Western Cape was recently acknowledged by Education Minister Angie Motshekga in the latest NSC award ceremony, as having the highest throughput rates in the country.
According to Hammond schools follow-up on learner absenteeism on a regular basis, but the lack of parental support in some communities makes this a very difficult task. “School-safety fieldworkers in our districts continuously follow-up on learner truancy, meeting parents and mediating between schools, parents and learners to ensure re-integration into schools. Retaining learners across the grades involves several interventions such as providing support and remedial action for learners at risk of dropping out and following up with those who have stopped attending school to encourage them to return.
“Each district annually develops an improvement plan where large numbers of learners are not performing academically at the required levels. These plans contain a number of actions that relate to the holistic support of the child, for example.”
