Govt must address causes of crime and gangsterism, EC community tells Zuma

Government needs to address the root causes of crime and gangsterism, such as unemployment and the delivery of essential services in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape.

These were some of the grievances which the Lusikisiki community members raised with President Jacob Zuma during his visit to the community on Saturday.

In a statement by The Presidency, it was said Zuma undertook that all three levels of government would intensify the delivery of basic services to the people in a bid to improve their living conditions and take decisive action against crime. According to The Presidency, Zuma’s Siyahlola Presidential Monitoring Visit in Lusikisiki began at the police station and he is said to have remarked that it was modern and its facilities were sufficient to tackle the challenge of crime head on.

The Presidency said the Minister of Police announced the station would officially open on August 1.

Zuma said: “We believe that this new police station will make a significant contribution to our fight to reduce crime in this community and defeat the scourge particularly of gangsterism in the form of ‘Amavondo’, about which I have received a number of complaints.”

Zuma further appealed to the community not to take the law into their own hands.

He then went on to visit the St Elizabeth Hospital where he learned from the management that they were in “dire need” of water and other essentials at the hospital. Some of these needs included professional staff, medicines, specialists nurses and doctors as well as the construction of new wards.

Zuma further undertook to raise the issues with the department of health and public works as well as the issue the hospital management raised of a construction in the hospital that stopped “mysteriously in 2010”.

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