The City of Cape Town conducted an integrated beach safety operation as well as numerous roadblocks in Muizenberg on Saturday 19 November as part of its festive season readiness plan.
More than 4 000 uniformed staff as well as 600 lifeguards will be on duty during the festive period.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said beaches, pools, roads and parks are the biggest focus areas of the City’s safety efforts over the festive season.
“We want Capetonians and visitors to be safe in our city this summer as locals and visitors take advantage of Cape Town’s many beautiful attractions and weather.
“The City has more than four thousand uniformed enforcement staff available in shifts over this period, and 600 lifeguards at identified beaches and public swimming pools.
“In addition, thousands of staff members in other departments too are working to keep our city clean and functioning so that our residents can safely enjoy the summer season and the year-end festivities.”
Mayco member for Safety and Security JP Smith said the consumption of alcohol will once again be a key focus area, as a major risk not only in terms of water safety but also road safety.
“We have our traffic department and law enforcement and their specialised units will play an important role.
“Traffic has a great responsibility in terms of keeping the alcohol off our roads and law enforcement with keeping the alcohol off our beaches.
“Unfortunately, a common denominator in many problems is alcohol, drunk pedestrians, drunk drivers, people drinking on the beaches and then getting into disagreements, there are near drownings and worse case scenarios drownings.
“This is peak summer season and that means additional veld fires but also fires in communities often linked to alcohol or other substance abuse or negligence.”
Every year, thousands of litres of alcohol are confiscated over the festive period, with Boxing Day and New Year’s Day posing the biggest challenge.
During the last festive season, officers confiscated 8 699 bottles of alcohol, amounting to over 4 786 litres.
“As summer approaches, more people are winding down and planning their holidays and a lot of that involves going to the beach, to the mall and going out at night.
“Every department during this time has its own responsibility and we bring on board additional technologies and a lot of overtime budget to push extra feet on the ground so that we are able to focus on all the enforcement on the roads, the roadblocks, the reckless and negligent driving.
“The highway unit is out in full force, law enforcement is able to focus on our beach and coastal areas while still keeping a fully intensive campaign going with police in our priority, so-called Leap areas.”
Smith added that the City’s operational plan has been refined over many years and that police are a core part of the plan.
“The police also have their particular focus responsibilities, fire and rescue services are on standby with seasonal staff available.
“Neighbourhood watches are also important role players; they help us with our beach patrols so we are very dependent on the incredible value of those 23 000 accredited neighbourhoods watch members in communities.”
“Our emergency call centre also has additional people coming on duty and has standby staff so when the call volume spike we can rapidly expand the call centre’s functionality making sure everyone gets an answer quickly when they call for an emergency.”
