By Abubakr Abrahams

Some 500 residents from Kensington, Maitland and Factreton held a public march over the weekend to Kensington police station to raise their concerns over the alleged lack of police resources in Kensington. Mogamat Noordien, chairperson of the Kensington Community Police Forum, says police in the area have received increased criticism for not doing enough to stop the spike of gang violence.  With dignitaries present, the community handed over a memorandum of demands.

“Our first demand was that we need more resources to cater for the amount of people in the area. We need more vehicles, we need more visible police in uniforms and we need more detectives. Although we received two detectives last week, this is not enough,” he told VOC.

If community members ever needed more reason to show their concern over the situation in the area, Noordien spoke of the news of a man that was killed in a shooting two hours after the march concluded.

Frustrated community members are looking forward to seeing a positive change in the area after handing over of the memorandum. Noordien clearly affirmed that they won’t stop the urgency for a better police force in the area.

“We gave them 14 days’ notice to give us a report back; otherwise we will be back at the police station, marching with the community at that time.” VOC