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OVER 30 POLICE VEHICLES ROTTING, PARTS LOOTED

06/12/2021 09:01:00 BY SIBUSISO ZWANE

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MANZINI - Rotting, depreciating and allegedly being looted!

This is what is happening to over 30 police vehicles, which have been parked at the Matsapha Police Academy for over three years. Worth noting is that, this is happening at a time when the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) is facing a serious challenge of shortage of vehicles yet their workload is increasing day after day. The police cars include bakkies, sedans and kombis. According to sources within the police service, some officers have been allegedly helping themselves to parts of the cars over the past three years as the vehicles had been lying idle at the Matsapha Police Academy.

According to insiders, the service is having a serious challenge in terms of vehicles as some police stations only have one car, which, sometimes they have to kick-start because of some mechanical faults. As such, they said the police usually fail to attend crime scenes on time. They said according to information received from the management of the law enforcement agency, the cars had been written off as they were unserviceable, but they said they believed that the organisation should have made means to service some of them, especially during the ongoing unrest as they were stretched. Again, they suggested that government should have at least auctioned the vehicles in order to boost its coffers and buy new ones.

They highlighted that police across the country sometimes had to hitch rides from members of the public to get to crime scenes and when performing other duties because government was failing to service the vehicles or auction them in order to purchase new ones. “A majority of police stations and posts, especially in rural areas, have one car and this situation is not new as there were reports on same in the past years,” the insiders said.

Unrest

For example, they said one of the police stations which was facing a challenge of vehicles, was the Mankayane Police Station, yet its duties were increasing due to the ongoing unrest. They said the police were usually forced to hitchhike to crime scenes and a recent incident was where farm dwellers at Nsuka attacked a farm owner, a police officer and two other men and also torched the businessman’s car as the police arrived about two hours after they were called and they found that the vehicle had been reduced to ashes and five people injured, including one of the community members who was shot by the law enforcer.

“Most of the time, in some of the affected police stations and posts, police officers from General Duty, Traffic Department and Criminal Investigations Department (CID) share the same car,” the sources said. On top of that, they said police officers from the Traffic Department usually used a private vehicle to stage roadblocks, where they came face-to-face with armed robbers and drug dealers among other dangerous people. “We are approaching the festive season, where the pro-democracy movement is fighting for an all-inclusive dialogue, with insufficient cars,” the sources said. They emphasised that the outbreak of COVID-19 and ongoing political unrest had made the situation worse.

They said in 2019, the police post at Ngudzeni was without a vehicle for about a year and sometimes they had to depend on Dumako Police Post for a vehicle, which also strained them. Once more, they added they sometimes had to push exhibits in a wheelbarrow to court as the sole car they had would either be in use or had developed mechanical faults.

Meanwhile, Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport Thulani Mkhaliphi said there was no way they could know conditions of vehicles until they were presented for diagnosis and fixing. Therefore, he referred this publication to the relevant department, which is the police organisation. On the other hand, Chief Police Information Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said the police vehicles in question were declared unserviceable. She said they were told that the vehicles would be taken to the Central Transport Administration (CTA) where they were told that the vehicles would be accepted once the administration had space for them. She said CTA was auctioning other vehicles and that would give space for the cars parked at the Matsapha Police Academy.

“We appreciate the effort that had been done by government as it purchased a new fleet for the organisation,” Vilakati said. She added that even though the cars had been delivered, they were not enough as the police responsibility increased day after day. She also alluded to the fact that some police stations were operating with only one car. She also added that most of the motor vehicles operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 30 days per months, thus they could not last long. However, when she was told that the vehicles had been there for over three years and their value was depreciating as they were rotting and allegedly being looted by some police officers, she said she was not aware how long the cars had been parked at the Matsapha Police Academy. “We do not auction cars, but government does,” Vilakati said.

Targeted

Worth noting is that, recently, the police claimed that the vehicles seemed to be targeted as three of them were allegedly shot at. One was allegedly shot twice at KaHlobile in Matsapha, while another was shot at five times at KaKhoza in Manzini. Another was reported to have been shot at three times in Malkerns.
Recently, a businessman Michael Toepfer said during the June/July 2021 unrest, he fixed two police cars at Malkerns Police Station as most of the vehicles they had mechanical faults. There are other businesses, like the Eswatini Bankers Association which donated cars to the police service.