MEC pushes for safer province
JOBURG - In the quest to ensure that Gauteng becomes a safe and secure region, provincial community have dedicated February as a Safety month and MEC for Community Safety, Sizakele Nkosi – Malobane called on citizens to ‘Refrain from giving criminals the respect they do not deserve’.
MEC for Community Safety, Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane called on citizens to “Refrain from giving criminals the respect they do not deserve”.
Briefing the media at the Pyramid Conference Centre, Nkosi-Malobane said this demonstrated the department’s unprecedented commitment to bettering the lives of all citizens of Gauteng.
“Premier David Makhura has outlined the Ten Pillar Programme which is the pulse in all government departments.”
She said the commemorative month of February depicts the department’s relentless commitment to the Ten Pillar Programme as articulated by the premier.
“These programmes are vehicles to drive the aspirations of the department of community safety. It is therefore incumbent upon ourselves as a collective that we begin to be seen as taking responsibility for our safety as citizens of Gauteng,” Nkosi-Malobane said.
She said safety was a collective responsibility which can be realised through a collective effort. Nkosi-Malobane said the effort required all citizens of Gauteng to be safety ambassadors in the manner in which they execute their various duties.
“We have to be conscious of the undertones that to some extent exacerbate and magnify criminal and deviant activities. We need to refrain from giving criminals the respect they do not deserve,” she said.
The MEC said her department will execute the community road safety councils, the Youth Safety Summit, anti-gangsterism camps, traffic wardens and the unveiling of a new fleet of cars for the department. Nkosi-Malobane said the launch of community road safety councils will be held on 27 February. She also acknowledged that the absence of youth safety policy in the province invariably had an effect on the mainstreaming of youth safety by government departments. She added that in order to develop a meaningful youth safety policy, the department will engage in a dialogue with youth in correctional services who are already incarcerated and serving their term.
Nkosi-Malobane said, “These young persons will be able to [give] input and share with us [that which they think] are the key attributes and challenges facing young people who end up in correctional facilities. This is a ground-breaking innovation that will guide the policy formulation informed by the perpetrators themselves, and is aligned to the three pillars of transformation namely modernisation and industrialisation.”
