Criminals slammed for disrupting ambulance services
"We cannot afford situations where every time we have an emergency we have to go via the nearest police station," said Joburg EMS spokesperson.
The spokesperson for the City of Johannesburg’s Emergency Management Services, Robert Mulaudzi, has urged residents to protect EMS personnel while they are rendering an essential service to the community.
The appeal follows the robbery and hijacking of a Joburg EMS night shift ambulance crew in Cosmo City on Saturday, 23 September.
According to Mulaudzi, the ambulance crew was responding to an emergency call in the area. “While they were looking for the physical address they were requested to go to, two male suspects came from nowhere, pointed a gun at them and instructed them to get out of the ambulance which they did, and the suspects drove off with the ambulance,” said Mulaudzi.
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He added that the traumatised crew managed to walk to the nearby Cosmo City Police Station to seek help and a case of hijacking and robbery was registered.
“This barbaric criminal behaviour is worrying, because it does not only create fear and panic among the emergency services personnel who sacrifice their lives in order to save others, it also disrupts service delivery to our communities. We cannot afford situations where every time we have an emergency we will have to go via the nearest police station to request a police escort.
This process will hamper our response times to the scene of an emergency,” he said.
He also said they cannot afford situations where they have no-go areas.
“Communities must work together with us to remove these criminal elements within our communities by reporting them to the police, because if they don’t, they are the ones who are going to suffer when they need assistance from the emergency services,” said Mulaudzi.
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