SA municipalities are facing growing financial pressure while residents continue to demand improved service delivery and safer communities.
At the same time, businesses, residential estates, and homeowners spend billions of rand each year on alarm monitoring, CCTV surveillance, and emergency response services.
I believe municipalities with established municipal police departments should explore the creation of dedicated alarm monitoring and response divisions as a means of both improving public safety and generating additional municipal revenue.
Municipal police already possess many of the resources required to provide such services, including patrol vehicles, control rooms, communication systems, CCTV infrastructure, trained officers, and emergency dispatch capabilities.
By leveraging these existing assets, municipalities could offer alarm monitoring, panic response, CCTV monitoring, and emergency dispatch services to residents, businesses, and estates on a fee-for-service basis.
Revenue generated from these services could be ring-fenced and reinvested into expanding municipal police capacity, purchasing additional vehicles, upgrading technology, increasing CCTV coverage, and employing more officers.
This would reduce municipalities’ reliance on property rates and other traditional revenue streams while directly improving public safety.
Such an initiative would not replace the core functions of municipal police but rather create a self-sustaining division that enhances service delivery and allows municipalities to make better use of existing infrastructure and resources.
In a country where local governments are constantly searching for innovative ways to improve financial sustainability, this model deserves serious consideration.
By creating municipal police alarm monitoring and response divisions, municipalities could strengthen public safety, create jobs, and unlock new revenue streams without placing additional burdens on taxpayers.
Roydon Brown, ActionSA, Ward 7
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