Vryburg: Gender Based Violence continues to negatively affect Phola Park in Vryburg, Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District.
The Community Safety and Transport Management has once again mobilised different stakeholders around Naledi Local Municipality using the District Development Model (DDM) to visit the informal settlement area of Phola Park in a door to door visit and targeted forty (40) households.
Upon the inception of the door to door process, stakeholders encountered numerous challenges that the community faced, such as gender-based violence, high unemployment rates, gangsterism, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, burglary, rape, children not attending schools due to lack of birth certificates and elderly not having identity documents to access government basic services.
The solemn intention of this campaign is to educate the public on how and where to access government services and mainly reporting of gender-based violence that turned out to be a pandemic in the whole country.
“Our problem as a Phola community is that we’re not united in targeting criminality activities facing us. More often, Gender Based Violence incidents occur, and neighbours turn a blind eye instead of reporting the perpetrators to the authorities and only come forward when one has lost life,” said Dimpho Molefe, a concerned resident of Phola Park.
The Huhudi Police Station Commander, Lt Colonel Mhlanganiso Mbotho, said the community members of Huhudi make their job difficult by not reporting gender-based violence cases and other crimes or reporting them and later withdrawing the cases. They would be left with no choice but to let the perpetrators go and repeat the same crimes or even worse.
“I urge community members to report any crimes despite their size of it so they can act swiftly and maintain peace and order in the Huhudi location. He furthermore pleads to various stakeholders to work together to create more outreach programs to take place fortnightly to take government services to the community at large,” said Lt Colonel Mbotho during door-to-door visits.
Stakeholders joined the Department of Community Safety and Transport were The Community Policing Forum (CPF), the Department of Social Development, the South African Police Services (SAPS), the Department of Health, Naledi Local Municipality and Phola Park and Monoto location Cllr Pitso Gulane.