Mbulawa Wants A Helicopter For North Central Division
Bonte Seepi | Monday September 25, 2017 16:25
Mbulawa pleaded with Minister Shaw Kgathi during his address to the North Central Division (Number 2 district) police officers recently.
He said they appreciate what the government is doing in trying to improve their work.
“We appreciate the support from the government as we believe it is enough. So far, I can say almost all the officers in our division have residential accommodation and it is a great thing because we are continuing to receive more houses as we shall be given other houses soon at Mahalapye.
“I can also confirm that our Special Support Group (SSG) here is fully-fledged and they will soon be provided with dogs to help them in fighting crime.
However, the only thing that we lack is a helicopter,” Mbulawa said.
The regional police boss said since Palapye is rapidly developing, house breakings cases are escalating. He added that criminals take advantage of the fact that people develop their plots and leave for towns like Gaborone for working purposes whist leaving their properties unsecured.
He said their major concern is that the owners of those houses usually learn about the breakings after a long time as they abandon those houses for quite some time.
Mbulawa said the same applies to stockowners, saying it is unfortunate that they cannot even identify their stock when stolen as they fully rely on their herd boys.
“It is unfortunate because some of our suspects in stock theft cases are usually those herd boys,” he said.
The Number 2 district commanding officer, senior superintendent Paul Molapisi shared the same sentiments with Mbulawa saying they are experiencing more breakings due to new developments.
There is, however, a decline in the number of cases. He said in the first eight months of the year, they have recorded 149 cases of house breakings and theft as compared to 255 of 2016 and 245 of 2015 for the corresponding period.
There is however a big challenge of murder and rapes in Number 2 division,which Molapisi said are still rampant despite public campaigns done by the police at different forums.
He said since the beginning of the year, they recorded 14 cases of murder, 21 cases of threat-to-kill and 88 cases of rape.
He decried that the murder cases affect the police officers as they usually the first people to go to the crime scene and witness such horrible incidents.
“However, there is a slight reduction in targeted and serious offences of about 21% in the interval of five years. In contrast, in 2012 we recorded 1,661 cases while in 2016 we recorded a total of 1,300 cases.
There was also an increase in total accidents as we recorded 911 cases in 2012 and 1,101 cases in 2016, which is an increase of 190 cases,” Molapisi said. He added that due to the renovation of Morupule A and four malls currently under construction, they are facing a serious challenge of crime and roaming of illegal immigrants who come to Palapye for greener pastures.
Molapisi also outlined availability of market for stolen goods, especially electrical gadgets as one of the challenges saying if the market is still open the police will continue to have a challenge.