Following an oversight visit, the party says it is appalled by the horrendous state of the Warrenton Police Station and calls on the Provincial Police Commissioner to intervene.
OFM News reports that the party’s MPL Reinette Liebenberg says the police station is extremely under-resourced with at least three police vehicles waiting for repairs, poor ablution and shower facilities in the holding cells, as well as the lack of running water supply for cellmates. Liebenberg says these conditions are extremely concerning amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and that it comes as no surprise that crime is increasing in the town.
The oversight inspection by the party comes less than a month since OFM News reported on the 36-year-old Warrenton man who has been arrested in connection with the murder of a 4-year-old boy whose body was found at the suspect’s house inside a box covered with a blanket.
The boy had been reported missing by his family after he went to a local tuckshop on October 9 and never returned home. His body was later that night found at the suspect’s house in Ikhutseng in Warrenton.
“The conditions surrounding the immobile police vehicles answer so many questions relating to the recent spike in crime in Warrenton and its surrounds. This explains the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) inability to track down culprits of various crimes – they literally have been reduced to office-based administrators,” says Liebenberg.
She, in a statement, explains it is unacceptable for any toilet to become unusable, especially while the country braces itself for the second wave of Covid-19 infections.
“We cannot allow any state facility, on which thousands depend for their safety, to be rendered useless due to SAPS’s inability to properly maintain their fleet of police vehicles. We also cannot tolerate a situation whereby police stations and holding cells become inhabitable and unhygienic, least of all when we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic”.
Liebenberg says the party is calling on the Police Commissioner, Phiwe Mnguni, to act swiftly and will meanwhile lobby for a quicker turn around in terms of police vehicle repairs as well as for an improvement in the state of police stations and holding cells, during the upcoming Portfolio Committee meetings of the Legislature.
