The Gauteng Department of Community Safety has welcomed about 6000 Crime Prevention Wardens who underwent component fitness tests in January.
The recruits will spend the next three months in Cullinan, where they will undergo physical and mental test.
The wardens will be deployed to townships, informal settlements and hostel areas which include 361 wards across the province.
The recruitment forms part of the provincial government’s efforts to augment the efforts made by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Metropolitan Police Departments (MPDs) to intensify the fight against crime and integrate the concept of ward-based policing.
The recrjuitment also forms part of Premier Panyaza Lusifi’s plans to tackle crime in the province, which includes installing face recognition cameras on every street, deploying a dedicated police vehicle to every ward, and acquiring more than 500 drones.
Lesufi said when the provincial government conceptualised the plan to recruit 6 000 Crime Prevention Wardens, people laughed and did not believe it was possible.
“As you enter this space, you must know we risked our future; we risked government finances for you to be here; it must not be in vain.
“We had many choices. The first choice was to go to traffic police in all local municipalities and ask them to please add this number, or we could have gone to the South African Police Services (SAPS). Still, we had this vision to recruit young people with strict orders to go to each ward to fight crime,” Lesufi said.”
Once successful, the duties of a Crime Prevention Warden will include crime prevention, stop and search, arrests, attending to complaints, maintaining law and order, and traffic control.
Lesufi said this was necessary as we cannot live in a country of lawlessness.
“We cannot live in a country where people commit crimes easily. We cannot live in a country where people are kidnapped. We cannot live in a country where people can just put up a shack and then an informal settlement, and we cannot live in a country where women are afraid to walk the streets, either day or night.
“We have to stop it, you have that talent, and you will have the resources to go and stop it,” he urged the recruits.
“I plead with you to make us proud and don’t do things that will humiliate us,” he said.
