Pretoria: 23 June 2016 – Today, the newly-built Keimoes Police Station in the Northern Cape was officially opened in line with the South African Police Service’s commitment to improve public access to policing services all over the country.

It further more forms part of the SAPS’s role in fulfilling its part in the implementation of the National Development Plan, which, among others, seeks to ensure greater access and improvement in the quality of public services as this is critical to achieving transformation.

The station falls within the Upington Cluster in the Northern Cape and serves an estimated 23 000 citizens, both South Africans and foreigners.

The opening of this state of the art police station is but one facet of improving service delivery. The need for the new police station has been identified in 1999 and subsequent engagements led to the building of the station. The completed project was handed over by the Department of Public Works to the SAPS on 30 September 2014 and has been operating on a full time basis from 1 December 2014.

The acting National Commissioner of the SAPS, Lieutenant General Kgomotso Phahlane urged the local community to work closely with the police, by being part of the relevant policing-community structures as this will assist greatly in addressing crimes that are prevalent in that area such as assault, theft, housebreaking, stock theft, murder, rape and drug-related crimes.

He further said: “We are planning on intensifying our projects, such as drug-awareness campaigns, school projects, rural safety awareness and domestic violence campaigns. We will achieve progress by skilling and training our members. Adapting to new ways of policing in a democratic society is not an event, but an ongoing process that is and will continuously be aligned with the contemporary needs of transforming our organisation.”

In the recent past the SAPS has opened several police stations in areas where none existed before in ensuring better and improved accessibility of policing services. Some of the areas which have just received their own police stations are in KwaZulu-Natal, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Western Cape.