eThekwini municipality launches their festive season integrated safety plan

As the festive season approaches, plans are in place for the city of Durban to ensure that residents and visitors enjoy their holidays in a safe and secured environment. This was revealed by eThekwini Mayor, Cllr Mxolisi Kaunda at a recent launch of the Festive Season Integrated Safety Plan at People’s Park.

It is that time of the year when holiday makers descend on our province and the city of Durban. The 2020 holiday season comes with unique challenges as we continue to battle Covid-19.

This global pandemic has compelled us to come up with creative ways to balance the task of saving lives and protecting livelihoods. The current spike in Covid-19 infections calls for more vigilance and enforcement of compliance with all the safety protocols.

Operation Vala has been launched to fight crime in the KZN province, particularly during the festive season.

The launch of Operation Vala in Durban is significant because as the economic powerhouse of KwaZulu-Natal, the increase of crime in eThekwini has a negative impact on the entire province.

Operation Vala will go a long way in creating safety in crime hotspot areas in eThekwini such as Inanda, KwaMashu, Phoenix and Umlazi which have become notorious for, among other things – sexual offences.

eThekwini Municipality is the pilot site for the implementation of the District Development Model (DDM) which was launched by the President last year and we view Operation Vala as a catalyst to achieve the objectives of the DDM, since it brings together various law enforcement agencies across all spheres of government.This operation will complement other crime fighting strategies the city has recently launched such as the Safer Cities Programme.

EThekwini is known for drawing thousands of visitors who want to experience the warm beaches and other tourist attractions.

However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw a dramatic decline of visitors into Durban. During the Easter season alone, eThekwini, lost 165 000 visitors which resulted in the loss of R600m in contribution to the GDP. The hospitality and leisure industry alone, lost R 4.7 billion of potential revenue.

Since the country moved to alert level one of the lockdown in September, we have seen the reopening of the tourism industry in our city.

Last week, we started our Rediscover Durban Summer Campaign by unveiling destination photo frames on our coastline to ensure that visitors have a memorable experience when they visit Durban attractions. This campaign came hot on the heels of the declaration of a blue flag status of our five beaches by the Wildlife and Environment Society South Africa. Other seven beaches are currently being assessed to be granted a fully-fledged blue flag status.

As we encourage visitors to come to our city, we are mindful of the fact that the country is entering the second wave of Covid-19 and we urge our visitors and residents to adhere to all Covid-19 safety protocols and avoid super-spreader events.

As the city, we have put the following measures to ensure that people who come to our city have a safe and memorable stay:

• Free park and ride shuttle service at the Drive Inn to prevent congestion along the beach;

• Closure of certain routes leading to the beach;

• Close monitoring of congestion at the beach by Metro Police and CCTV cameras;

• Constant deep cleaning and sanitization of ablution facilities;

• Deployment of 250 lifeguards;

• Procurement of seven receiving tents for separated children;

• Deployment of 32 child minders;

• Procurement of 200 000 arm bands;

• Deployment of 130 cleaning staff;

• Recruitment of 69 beach guides; and

• No consumption of alcohol will be allowed along the beach.

No events will be allowed at the beach except low-profile activations to keep people entertained.

We call upon members of the community and visitors to cooperate with our law enforcement officers and lifeguards on the beach so that we can save lives.

With these remarks, let me welcome you all to our beautiful city of Durban. Working together, we will ensure that we have an incident-free festive season.