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The Nelson Bay Municipality has noted with concern the increasing year-on-year drunk driving arrests over the busy Easter weekend, as a total of 97 drunk drivers were arrested between April 6 and April 10.
The metro has commended the arrests made through joint operations as they reflect the city's zero tolerance approach to drunk driving. However, a stern warning has been sent to drivers to refrain from breaking the law as they put innocent lives in danger.
NMBM Safety and Security MMC, Lawrence Troon, said that over the same period last year, the metro had recorded 78 arrests for drunk driving.
“This year-on-year increase in drunk driving arrests concerns us and it is something we will continue to fight with our stakeholders. These drivers put other people’s lives at risk and sometimes even damage our infrastructure,” Troon said.
He added that with two medium-risk events that the NMBM Disaster Management was a part of, the Splash Festival and the Chippa United vs. Orlando Pirates match, no major incidents were reported.
“We had joint operations with SAPS, Metro Police and Traffic Services as well as Provincial Traffic, yielding positive results. There were 55 arrests made by the Metro Police and 42 made by Traffic Services. Interdepartmental and intergovernmental cooperation was very good, especially from NMBM Public Health with the nurses that assisted during the major operations. The successful planning of the drunken driving operations resulted in the above increase in arrests,” he said.
The weekend operations led to 25 traffic warrants of arrests executed, a total of R41 100 recovered from warrants executed, attending to three fatal accidents, minor injury accidents and seven damage-only accidents.
The NMBM Fire and Emergency Services also attended to 70 fires, including six vehicle accidents, 34 bush fires, four building fires and six informal dwelling fires.
“We want to warn our residents and the visitors that come into our metro that cases of bribery as we saw this past weekend will never be tolerated. We will continue to visit taverns, our shotspotter is still active and we attended to six cases over the weekend. Working closely with our stakeholders, we will win the fight against crime, big and small. Any opportunistic criminal activities will be dealt with harshly to ensure the safety of all residents and visitors who love coming to our metro.”
