Furthermore, the vehicle patrol team made up of community members, drove approximately 60 hours of patrols. “This is a phenomenal achievement as they are volunteers from our community, using their own resources and doing this without expecting any compensation,” Town Watch reported in their monthly newsletter. “Our partnership with Herotel, AM Tech, and Canyon Risk Solutions are major contributors to making this possible and we appreciate this. We have to also mention our partnership with Farm Watch who has also been instrumental in making this possible.
“From a crime rate perspective, we did experience a spate of break-ins. We are however pleased that some of the stolen goods have been recovered. One break-in was prevented by a very alert security guard,” they said. “We currently have 25 cameras active and will shortly have 32 cameras throughout Hoedspruit. We have embarked on a recruitment drive to get more of our community to be part of Town Watch. This has yielded some good results, especially on the camera monitoring side.
Also read: Hoedies town gets CCTV surveillance
“We are constantly training community members on how to use the network.” They also need more community members to assist with vehicle patrols. “Our mandate is to observe and report and under no circumstances do we allow any of our members to endanger themselves or their property. We have arrangements with reaction teams and security companies such as Canyon Risk to assist us to achieve this.” Another way to get involved is to assist Town Watch financially.
“We use the funds to purchase equipment such as reflective jackets, torches, lights, magnetic vehicle signage, cameras, data for our cameras, maintenance, and signage.” They thanked their current contributors who enabled them to expand on their initial plan to have 12 cameras to the current 25. Pick n Pay will be holding its annual Bowls Evening event on November 11 at the Drakensig Bowls Club. This year, the funds raised are destined for Town Watch.
