The DA Youth in the Western Cape is doing a whistle-stop tour across the Cape Metro as part of their youth month celebrations. DA Youth Western Cape Chairperson, Carl Pophaim will be joined by various provincial and regional leadership in their engagement with communities. The Provincial Chairperson will be engaging young people on community safety and solutions to this issue we all face.
Across the country, we are seeing various attacks on students, young people and children on a daily basis. Sadly, many of these incidents involve youth-on-youth violence. DA Youth Western Cape Chairperson, Carl Pophaim said: “Young people deserve to live in safe communities. It cannot be that young girls must fear to walk in the streets or students cannot study in the comfort of their homes. Innocent lives are being lost because of the negligent distribution of police resources.”
In the Western Cape, the DA Youth welcomes the various interventions already made by the local and provincial government to curb the high rate of violence. The effective Metro Police, Law Enforcement and Special Investigating Unit within the City of Cape Town has had a significant impact on the safety of communities. The social crime prevention and youth development programmes of the Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town plays a major role in ensuring we keep young people out of a life of crime.
Programmes of this nature help to prevent the effect of violence on young people, but much more is needed to root out this evil in our communities.
The National Department of Police are failing the youth of the Western Cape. The Western Cape has the highest crime statistics in the country and the lowest person to police ratio in the country.
Not only is our youth losing their lives, but our brave service men and woman are being killed. We may not and cannot send our policemen and women into the line of duty without being fully resourced to fight for our community’s safety.
The DA Youth in the Western Cape welcomes the intergovernmental dispute initiated by the Western Cape Government and supports the Premier and MEC in exhausting all mechanisms to ensure we live in a safer Western Cape.
The DA Youth in the Western Cape will work with anyone who wants to productively address the impact of crime and build a safer province. The safety of our communities should be a priority for all.
No youth will be left behind!