The City is calling on national government to change the lockdown regulations to allow people to go shopping between the hours of 9am and 1pm.
JP Smith, Mayco Member for Safety and Security, said that currently, any person found on the street could claim to be out buying food.
Smith said: “It is impossible for the police, whether SAPS, SANDF, Metro Police or Law Enforcement, to truthfully determine whether a person is entitled to be on the street or not.
“The City is therefore calling for the national government to amend the regulations to limit the hours of shopping at shopping malls as well as spaza and tuck shops to the hours of 9am to 1pm daily as everybody will have had the chance to undertake their necessary shopping once the grant recipients have drawn their grant payments.
“We also call on them to limit the number of people who may be out to shop on any day to specific surnames who may be out on any given day or some other provision in the regulations to make regulations more helpful for the police to be able to improve the situation on the streets.”
STRINGENT: JP Smith
The City is also calling for the government to reconsider the use of neighbourhood watches.
“There are thousands of well-trained neighbourhood watches in Cape Town who would be able to continue doing the good work they do every day in fighting crime, as we have already seen criminals changing their modus operandi to take advantage of the lockdown.
“The deployment could be limited to just the NHWs who have received accreditation from the Provincial Department of Community Safety and who we know are trained and vetted,” added Smith.