NATIONAL. – A total of 140 of the 517 vehicles assigned to the police's Flying Squad are out of service and require maintenance or repair work. Only 377 vehicles are in use nationwide, according to information obtained through a DA parliamentary question.
Ian Cameron, DA MP and chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio committee on police, says the figures raise concerns about the unit's ability to respond quickly to violent crime and emergencies. The fleet is also ageing: 280 of the 517 vehicles have already covered more than 200,000 km. Of these, 166 have between 200,000 and 300,000 km on the clock, while another 114 have covered more than 300,000 km.
Gauteng has the largest allocation, with 56 of its 220 vehicles out of service. In the North West, 15 of 32 vehicles are unavailable, while 13 of 37 vehicles in the Eastern Cape are out of service. In Mpumalanga, ten of the 32 vehicles are not in use. Cameron further says Flying Squad members work at the frontline of the fight against dangerous and violent criminals and must respond quickly to emergency situations. He says the police must explain how long the vehicles have been out of service, when they are expected to return to duty, what replacement vehicles are available and whether the remaining vehicles are sufficient to meet the unit's operational needs.
Separate figures show that 88 of the 207 telephone lines assigned to Flying Squad units are not working. It is necessary to determine what the lines are used for, what alternatives are available and what impact their unavailability has on the unit's effectiveness. Cameron says the shortage of available vehicles undermines a specialised unit. The DA believes that competent municipalities should be able to play a greater role in crime-fighting alongside the police. The party points to Cape Town's locally managed law enforcement capability, including its SWAT unit, as an example of how municipal policing can strengthen safety.
The DA says South Africans deserve a police service equipped to respond when they need it most.
Read the parliamentary question on Flying Squad vehicles.
Photo: Ian Cameron
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
