A group of doctors has resorted to funding a private security company in the bustling suburb of Mayfair, Johannesburg, to make the area safer for the staff and patients at a busy hospital, as well as for visitors and local residents, according to a report in Daily Maverick.
Apart from the constant traffic chaos at a nearby intersection between Brixton Cemetery and an open piece of land, crime has become a major problem, making this particular area dangerous, especially at night, they said.
Doctors from the local Netcare Garden City Hospital have had their car windows smashed by people living on the vacant land, while patients are too scared to drive to the facility because of the lawlessness around the intersection.
The piece of uninhabited land has been taken over by homeless people who congregated there to receive food from a feeding scheme but who soon turned the space into an informal settlement and a rubbish dump, they said.
Dr Genevieve Ephraim, one of the victims of smashed car windows, said the spike in crime over the past year was unacceptable, and after complaints to City authorities fell on deaf ears, she and her colleagues put their own money towards hiring staff from a private security firm to clean up the area and provide safe and secure passage to the hospital for doctors and patients.
They managed to raise R150 000, enough to pay for six weeks of security presence. “We will try to continue in our personal capacity for at least one more month,” she said.
“The difference… in security, hygiene, general aesthetics and cleanliness around the hospital, businesses and the the local primary school, is nothing short of remarkable. Patients have commented and all the doctors are elated by the improvement. We feel safer driving into the hospital at night and after hours.”
Compounding the problem is the general state of Brixton Cemetery, she added, where there is no security, walls are broken, and vagrants have set up home on the property, cooking over open fires within the cemetery.
“The atrocious neglect there has been ongoing for many years; there has been absolutely no maintenance of the boundary well for at least 10 years, which is why this vagrancy has snowballed,” Ephraim said.
The private security team, which has been there since April, now has a permanent security hut on the open piece of land, and maintains 24/7 patrols in the area.
The doctor added that the local Community Policing Forum, the Brixton precinct, had recorded nearly 2 000 crimes, including aggravated robbery, common robbery, theft out of or from motor vehicles and assault.
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