Durban - Metro police plan to introduce measures to improve safety along the national routes and prevent violent incidents similar to those that took place on the N2 near Chesterville, where two trucks were burnt by protesters on Sunday.
According to the police unit, the community were protesting over being without power for a number of days.
Acting metro head Sbonelo Mchunu said: “We intend to install CCTV technology to watch over our freeways and highways with licence-recognition plates as well as facial-recognition cameras.
“We want to advance a request that repeat offenders of municipal infrastructure vandalism – be it through theft, road surface or illegal dumping – be deprived of access to municipal services until they surrender themselves to authorities. This will include interruptions caused by so-called business forums.”
Metro spokesperson Colonel Boysie Zungu said metro police were concerned about N2 protests. He said the protests were causing a disturbance to road users, putting lives of the community in danger and affecting the economy of eThekwini Municipality.
“We have increased police patrols on all our freeways, we are appealing to the public to also inform us if they suspect any kind of suspicious activity,” he said.
Bhekisisa Mngadi, the area’s ward councillor, said while he could not speak on the security issue, he was concerned about the violence that occurred.
“While that violence was taking place, I was busy in another part of the area with workers from the City trying to restore power. The community was frustrated. They reported the outage, but there seemed to be no urgency in attending to the fault and they had been without power for days. I even called to report matters,” he said.
Asad Patel, the chairperson of the Westville Community Police Forum (CPF), said they were concerned as there had been several protests that had turned violent.
He said several vehicles were looted and motorists and passengers were robbed at knife and gunpoint during a protest. The rubble and debris thrown by demonstrators caused damage to the tyres of vehicles well after the protest had taken place.
“This area needs to be declared a hot spot and the SAPS needs to have an urgent and serious discussion with the people behind the protests. As the Westville CPF, we are very concerned. Instead of the N2 being a gateway to quick and safe travel, it is becoming a haven for thugs, criminals and vagrants.
“Sanral and the eThekwini Metro need to step up with the SAPS,” he said.
Economists warned the situation needed to be reined in before it undermined the country’s fragile economy.
Professor Irrshad Kaseeram said the country was still faced with extreme poverty which was made worse when failing infrastructure caused lack of service delivery, leading to the type of frustration that played out on Sunday.
He said protecting national routes was key to the economy.
Sanral was contacted and said it would respond, but had not responded by the time of publication.