{"id":252001,"date":"2023-03-07T13:13:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T11:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished\/"},"modified":"2023-03-07T13:13:45","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T11:13:45","slug":"six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished\/","title":{"rendered":"Six years to renovate a police station and it still isn\u2019t finished"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Nombulelo%20Damba\/indwe_charge_office.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Renovation of Indwe police station charge office started in 2017. Photos: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first R7-million tender to renovate Indwe police station was awarded in 2017.<\/li>\n<li>What was meant to be a 18-month project has taken more than six years.<\/li>\n<li>Two construction companies hired left the job incomplete and it looks like a third company will now be hired.<\/li>\n<li>The community has resorted to self-policing and community justice because of greatly reduced police capacity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Renovations to the police station in Indwe, Eastern Cape, started six years ago and were meant to take 18 months, but the job is still unfinished.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Two construction companies hired to renovate the Indwe police station left before completing the job. <span>In both cases their contracts were withdrawn due to non-compliance, according to the Eastern Cape police spokesperson Thembinkosi Kinana.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am sorry we are not at liberty to disclose the amounts as well as the names of the contractors as there are still processes underway to investigate these matters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>However, at a public meeting held at Indwe community hall on 22 February, Chris Hani District Commissioner Major General Rudolph Adolph revealed that a tender of R7-million had been issued to Magubane Plant and Construction in 2017. He said the company had abandoned the project and the matter is in court.<\/p>\n<p>GroundUp confirmed the company\u2019s appointment but could get no further comment.<\/p>\n<p>Community leader Thabo Khethi said the second construction company was hired in 2019 and given a tender of R42-million, but it abandoned the project in 2020. We could not independently confirm this.<\/p>\n<p>Community policing forum chairperson Rebecca Sondarha said, \u201cNothing was discussed with us. We just saw construction companies come and go, and no explanation was given. Even before they demolished the old holding cells, we were not told, and I have been the chairperson for 15 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are cases that we don\u2019t bother reporting to police because we know there\u2019s nothing these police can do due to lack of capacity. Cases such as cellphone theft are handled by community members,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe only have four police officers and most of the time you will find only two officers working per shift. A police station with holding cells is in Dordrecht, more than 40km away, or Queenstown which is more than an hour\u2019s drive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a lack of police vans. Most of the time only one van is working. If that van transports a suspect to Queenstown for stealing a cellphone that means the whole town will be left with no police vans and one officer. Because of that, we resorted to handling the small cases ourselves as a community. Each street has a leader that deals with small crimes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Suspects are subjected to community courts and rough justice.<\/p>\n<p>At night the police station is inaccessible, according to Khethi and Sondarha.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the community catches a criminal at night they are forced to take them to Dordrecht or wait with the suspect until the Indwe police station opens in the morning,\u201d said Khethi. \u201cNow imagine having to pay money to hire transport to take a suspect to Dordrecht, and again in the morning you must be there for the case. SAPS is failing us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Kinana said the station is open 24 hours a day. \u201cIf some of the gates happen to close, it is solely for security reasons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He said construction work at the station is expected to continue soon, once the paperwork on a new contract is finalised.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Nombulelo%20Damba\/indwe_holding_cells.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Holding cells at Indwe police station have still not been renovated.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Renovation of Indwe police station charge office started in 2017. Photos: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik The first R7-million tender to renovate Indwe police station was awarded in 2017. What was meant to be a 18-month project has taken more than six years. Two construction companies hired left the job incomplete and it looks like a third company [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-252001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/six-years-to-renovate-a-police-station-and-it-still-isnt-finished.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}