All four police helicopters serving the Eastern Cape are out of commission, seriously hampering police operations in the province.
And while two of the aircraft are expected to be operational in April and September, the other two will only be back in service in 2022.
The helicopters need to be serviced or inspected, but for one of the helicopters that process will have taken 30 months.
A security expert and the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) say not having a single operational helicopter in the field is undermining crime-fighting efforts in a province where they are badly needed.
The police helicopters are used in search-and-rescue missions to look for escaped criminals, chasing cash-in-transit heist suspects and investigating livestock theft.
In December, the last operational helicopter was also taken in for a service.
The helicopter that will resume service in April has been out of commission since September 2018.
The situation was confirmed by safety and liaison MEC Weziwe Tikana-Gxothiwe in a parliamentary response to DA MPL Bobby Stevenson.
In her written reply, Tikana-Gxothiwe said the H 125 (squirrel), ZS-RDH, helicopter was sent in for its 12-year midlife service on September 30 2018 and would be operational again on April 1.
The second, the R 44 (Robinson), ZS-RLD, was booked in for inspection on July 12 2019.
It will resume service in July 2022.
The H 125 (squirrel), ZS-RPA, which was involved in an accident during a forced landing that severely damaged its engine, has been out of commission since November 11 but will return to the field in September.
The fourth helicopter, the R 44 (Robinson), ZS-RKN, has been awaiting service since December 1. Tikana said it would be back in service in July 2022.
Security expert Johan Burger said it was unacceptable that helicopters meant to play a crucial role in combating crime in the province could not be in service for years.
“Helicopters increase police visibility far more than vehicles on the ground, simply because it is easier to see them over a wide area and their sound and signage attracts immediate attention,” Burger said.
“They can also be deployed to problem areas more quickly than ground forces.
“In addition, helicopters are far more difficult to avoid and evade than is the case with ground forces and road-bound vehicles.
“The fact that all four helicopters are unavailable at the same time, for whatever reasons, is simply not acceptable,” he said.
He said service and maintenance should be well-planned and co-ordinated, given the importance of their role.
“This should certainly not be accepted as normal and should rather be viewed as an indictment against SAPS management in the province that appears to have neglected the province’s air wings.”
He said the absence of helicopters would give criminals leeway and embolden them to commit crimes, knowing they had a better chance of getting away.
Popcru provincial secretary Zamikhaya Sikade could not emphasise the importance of the helicopters enough.
“The [helicopters] are used as a way of quick intervention in serious crimes like cash-in-transit heists, hijackings and stock theft, and the fact that they cannot be used seriously affects the crime-fighting capacity of the police in the province.
“It is not acceptable,” Sikade said.
Stevenson described the grounding of the helicopters as clipping the police’s wings, saying the delay in servicing the helicopters stood in the way of the province’s fight against gang violence, stock theft and murders.
“In a capable state, it cannot take 2½ years to fix a helicopter when we have an average of 13 people being murdered every day in this province,” Stevenson said.
He said he would follow up with Tikana-Gxothiwe to request the speeding up of the servicing process.
“Criminals need to live in fear of the sound of helicopters overhead and searchlights at night.
“This is what is required to hunt them down if we are going to have an effective criminal justice system,” he said.
The grounding of the helicopters has also left five pilots with nothing to do.
Tikana-Gxothiwe said the province was supposed to have seven pilots.
However, she did not say why it only had five in her written response.
Provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Liziwe Ntshinga referred queries to provincial police spokesperson Brigadier Tembinkosi Kinana, who referred them to colleague Colonel Sibongile Soci.
Soci said questions on the matter were being handled by Tikana-Gxothiwe’s spokesperson, Unathi Binqose.
Binqose said, ideally, the helicopters would be available at all times.
“However, having them serviced and kept in a good condition to provide the crucial service they are meant for is something we have to deal with every now and then,” he said.
“We are thankful that the impact has not been bad on the work of the SAPS, as contingency measures are in place.
“It is imperative to note that aircraft go through different routes and processes when undergoing maintenance, service or inspection.
“Unfortunately, those process sometimes take longer than we would desire.
“This is all in the interest of ensuring that the aircraft are in a serviceable condition before they take back to the skies for any official duty or emergency.”
He said parts needed to be ordered, often from overseas, and it was essential that the right suppliers were found.
Then there was the issue of getting the correct certification from the Aviation Authority.
“All efforts are being made to ensure that the aircraft are back speedily,” he said.
While unpacking the provincial crime statistics for the third quarter of the 2020/2021 financial year in February, Tikana-Gxothiwe described stock theft as one of the province’s major headaches, saying it affects the livelihoods of both wealthy commercial farmers and poorer subsistence farmers.
Across the province 1,747 cases of stock theft were reported, which was a decrease of 7.2% from the same period in 2019.
However, many instances of stock theft go unreported.
Statistics showed that serious crimes dropped by an average of 7%, but murder went up by 0.5% compared to the same period in 2019, climbing from 1,198 cases to 1,204 cases.
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