RUSTENBURG HERALD - RUSTENBURG - In response to a parliamentary question posed by the DA, the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, revealed the response times by the South African Police Service (SAPS), throughout the country.
In an unfortunate revelation, albeit not surprising, the North West province is positioned in a disappointing second last place. From these response times, criminals have all the time in the world to do their bidding without any fear of SAPS intervention. In the Northern Cape, it takes more than an hour on average for SAPS to respond to a violent crime or a crime in progress.
It was also revealed that the Eastern Cape and the Free State have four 10111 command centres each, with Mpumalanga standing at three and Limpopo at two, the rest of the provinces – including Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape – are allocated only a single one. This has led to the fact that organised crimes, such as those related to gangsterism, are running rampant in many a province. These figures come on the back of a previous response wherein it was revealed that 10111 centres across South Africa were grossly understaffed, with the SAPS managing to deploy only about 40% of what it considered to be the ideal staff complement to 10111 centres, nationally. These response times are simply not acceptable in a time when more than 85 people are murdered and 594 violently assaulted in our country each and every day. In fact, these statistics only indicate the "incompetent ANC" government, as commented on by a DA press release on 11 April.
National SAPS response times in descending order:
* Northern Cape: 60m 10s
* North West: 36m 1s
* Eastern Cape: 30m 6s
* Free State: 29m 59s
* Mpumalanga: 23m 13s
* KwaZulu-Natal: 21m 44s
* Limpopo: 16m 14s
* Gauteng: 11m 56s
* Western Cape: 17m57s
