Today, MMC of Public Safety, Michael Sun and I visited the 13 children who were injured when their school transport hit a tree just before 06:00am this morning in Meadowlands, Soweto.
The driver has subsequently been arrested for reckless, negligent and drunk driving. Open bottles of alcohol were found in the vehicle.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these children. This is a tragic incident that should never have happened.
As a caring City, we will invest every effort into ensuring that incidents of this nature become a thing of the past.
As such, we will intensify JMPD operations targeted at scholar transportation, especially in the mornings. We will also be undertaking stop and search operations to test the roadworthiness of scholar transportation.
Six of the children were admitted at Chris Hani Baragwaneth, one in Tshepo Themba Private Hospital, the other five at Koos Hospital.
The five admitted at Koos Hospital have fortunately been discharged, however, two at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital remain in a critical condition.
We wish all these children a speedy recovery, and we will work tirelessly to ensure that the rule of law is upheld by everyone, especially those who are transporting our children.