Hardap Police engages stakeholders
The Namibian Police (NamPol) in Hardap Region is determined to clean up crime and make it a safe place for all its inhabitants by rolling out Operation Omake through out the villages and towns with the assistance of various stakeholders.
Early this week, Nampol hosted a stakeholders meeting to discuss the start of an active crime prevention campaign in the Region. The meeting was attended by regional and local authority councillors, religious leaders, and traditional authorities, CEO of various village and towns councils in the region as well as community members.
Officiating at the meeting, Hon. Esme Isaak, Governor of the Hardap said that one way of thinking about crime is to think about the criminal him or herself, because there is no crime without a criminal.
“Crime and criminals all together have no place in my region. I stand here today before all of you to make sure that we will put together all the machinery of the state to suppress every effort of every criminal in this region. You can count on this,” she said.
She said the commission of crime to the vulnerable members of the community is not only a very serious disrespect for authority in the country but also a very inhumane thing to do.
“Enough is enough, I challenge the stakeholders to come up with aggressive methods that will make our homes and streets safer,” she added.
According to an article published in a daily newspaper last year, Hardap Region is at the top in the national police rankings with respect to the incidence of both murder and rape, with an average annual murder rate of 39,6 per 100,000 people in the population and an annual rape rate of 91,7 recorded cases per 100,000 people over the past two years.
The objectives of Operation Omake in Hardap Region is to prevent crime, make the region a safer place to live, to enforce the liquor Act of 1998, to enforce traffic and drug laws as well as to increase police visibility within the region amongst many others.
Operation Omake was launched in November last year by Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Namoloh after the lifeless bodies of the Cecilia and Jacqueline Kuaseua were found on 9 October in Khomasdal.
However, the campaign only commenced in Hardap on 22 December. Omake is Oshiwambo/Otjiherero for ‘putting hands together’. The operation is a joint effort between the Namibian Police Force (NamPol), Windhoek City Police and Namibian Defence Force (NDF).
