Crimes at the notorious Golden Harvest Park and the City of Johannesburg’s old nursery, dominated discussions at the Crime Indaba public meeting.
The first public meeting since the beginning of the new Ward 101 councillor’s term lasted for about three hours at Sharonlea Primary School on the evening of 26 October.
This meeting followed roughly two months of engagement between Ward 101 councillor Dalu Cele, Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo, Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), Metro police, Honeydew police, private security companies and residents. For the past few years, residents have been complaining about the City’s failure to maintain the park, the state of the houses on the property, the old nursery and enforcing bylaws. All these failures initially contributed to the increase of crime in the ward.
City Parks and Zoo Region C manager, Puleng Ditabe told residents they’ve increased security efforts at the park. She said the entity had, over the past few weeks, started maintaining the park.
She said they established that there were many entry points to the park and this was contributing to crime incidents. Some of the main problems established were that security at the entrance was not recording the details of the vehicles entering the facility.
“We have instructed our security company to search all vehicles at the main gate. We learnt a lot of lessons and we have seen where we need to improve,” she said.
JPC’s Fanis Sardianos, said 16 of the houses in the park were not safe. He said they would start to create awareness at the park, advising occupants to leave the area.
The old nursery along Olivenhout Avenue, which residents have been complaining about for about two years, was being addressed. “Legally, we are not allowed to just evict occupants from that building. A proper procedure should be followed,” he said.
He promised that the entity would engage with the occupants and create awareness to ensure that in February next year, most of these problems would have been solved.
Honeydew police acting station commander, Colonel Joseph Mncwabe applauded councillor Cele’s integrated approach in the fight against crime. “Honeydew police precinct has been identified nationally as one of the worst areas contributing to crime.” He said the partnership was starting to yield positive results in the fight against crime in the area.
Honeydew Sector 1 chairperson, Gerhard Erasmeer urged residents to support police and the City entities as they do resolve these problems. “We cannot just sit back and expect things to happen; we need to work with our councillor and all these stakeholders to solve this problem,” he said.
