Is load shedding hindering police work?
Is load shedding stopping Florida, Honeydew and Roodepoort police from helping you? Find out here.
A recent media report indicates that only 30 per cent of police stations in South Africa have generators installed, begging the question: Can police officers perform during load shedding?
According to Rapport in a recent article, the police often cannot use their GPS and radio communication systems during load shedding. Allegedly radio communication systems cannot operate for more than four hours using batteries alone. Police officers also do not have access to national systems on their computers during load shedding.
The threat is that load shedding schedules are made available to the public, which includes criminals, who can then use the schedules to plan their onslaught on society.
The Record established that Honeydew, Florida and Roodepoort police stations have working generators installed that enables the basics in a station to function. According to Honeydew Cluster spokesperson Karen Jacobs, these basics include lights, the charge office, computers and handheld radios, in Honeydew’s case.
“Roodepoort station can also run at full capacity during load shedding,” she said.
“In Florida station’s case, they have a smaller generator installed that can run emergency systems during load shedding.”
Currently, the Florida facilities are being upgraded which means that the generator runs regardless of load shedding as the structure is renovated.
“It depends on the size of the generator, which would enable you to have less or more things connected while municipal power is out,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said that each station has a contingency plan in place should things go wrong. Telecommunications (police station phones) could possibly be affected during load shedding, but that does not mean the public cannot reach the police.
“Even if our office phones are offline, situations can be reported to the national police line (10 111) or to the sector police,” Jacobs said.
