Despite other violent crimes declining significantly in the year 2023 , police say murder, stock theft and theft of motor vehicle remains a headache for them.
Giving welcome remarks at the ongoing 50th Botswana Police Senior Officers' annual conference held at Special Support Group(SSG) hall, Acting Commissioner of police, Phemelo Ramakorwane said according to their statistics for the year 2023, as compared to 2022, murder cases increased with 4%, stock theft with 19% and theft of motor vehicle had a sharp increase of 28%.
However, Ramakorwane said the service commits to refocus its resources and efforts towards reducing such crimes by the end of the year.
" Total crime was reduced by 8% from 173 140 cases recorded in 2022 to 159 680 cases in 2023. Similarly, violent and serious crimes which includes break-ins, robberies, rape, defilement, threat-to-kill, murder, stock theft and theft of motor vehicle, recorded an overall reduction of 4%," he said.
Ramakorwane added that the road safety situation also improved as confirmed by a reduction in both fatality and road traffic accident indices. He said this notwithstanding, the number of lives continue to be lost annually on the roads remains worryingly high.
" In 2023 we lost 396 lives due to road traffic accidents as compared to 404 in 2022, representing a 2% reduction," Ramakorwane said.
He further stated that while the crime landscape remains manageable they have observed a disturbing trend of illegal mining activities in the North Eastern part of Botswana of which local and foreign actors are involved.
