Welcome to the April version of the Blackheath City Improvement District Newsletter. April has again been filled with challenges, not just nationally, with strikes and political uncertainty sending the Rand into a downward spiral and soaring fuel prices, but also locally with other labour challenges, crime, service delivery issues and general littering featuring high on our list of concerns here in Blackheath Industria.
There has also been much good news for the local area. Again in April 2014 Blackheath is bragging with several new developments. Most notably is the Growthpoint Development in School Road. Growthpoint is developing 4 Warehousing units with office space ranging from 2300m2 to 4000m2 on the corner of School and Range Roads that will see the “completion” of School Road to a very, very high standard by the 01st of December 2014.
This once barren landscape, littered with Port Jacksons and the occasional illegal dumping, now heads to the forefront of development in Blackheath with high profile developments including the latest HomeChoice construction, MacAdams Baking Systems and Trident Steel all towering into the Blackheath sky setting a precedent for future delivery within the node and surely set to attract future interest, investment and similar development to the local area.
Blackheath is centrally located with easy access to the R102, Stellenbosch Arterial, R300, N2 and N1 motorways. Blackheath is also an ideal location for logistics and manufacturing concerns, with further easy access to several local residential areas that can offer a wealth of skilled and unskilled labour sets.
The South African Police Services
A range of issues are being experienced at the local Police Station. Local Police complain about a lack of staff, resources, management support and training.
Service levels have been described as “terribly poor” over the last decade and even with the establishment of a multi-million Rand Police Station linking to the Blue Downs Court, no improvement in service delivery or skills and equipment has seemingly been observed.
Local residents complain about a lack of Police visibility, a lack of response to crime and even a refusal to open cases when crime is reported at the local SAPS charge office.
Local business owners have similar complaints detailing that they find a lack of response to crime, a lack of visibility, poor response to case reporting, a lack of investigations and a poor response and feedback to reported crime. Most companies report that they no longer even attempt to report crime because it is too time consuming and they have come to expect a very poor response to reported crime. In other words they feel they are wasting their time to report crime because “nothing comes of it.”
The Blackheath CID has escalated this complaint to the office of the Minister in the Province who has responded by asking that we collate a list of complaints from the community so that an enquiry can be launched into the state of affairs at the local Blue Downs SAPS station. In this spirit, we hereby request that if you have a complaint or any relevant information that you please get in touch with me? This could be current or past.
Perhaps you have had a bad experience, perhaps they have refused to serve you at the charge office, perhaps reported crime was not responded to, or you or a staff member was turned away at the charge office and were therefore not able to report a crime?
Please assist us to formalise a list of complaints and initiate this inspection by senior officals at the Mfuleni / Blue Downs Police Station so that we can ensure that we and our assets are safe and that our concerns are being responded to by a properly constituted, equipped, staffed and managed SAPS institution.