President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to send special teams to go after the construction Mafia, saying they will not rest until kingpins and their associates have been arrested.
Ramaphosa said they have set up 20 task teams to go after illegal miners, the construction Mafia and those who are stripping the country of essential infrastructure.
He said the police have been able to arrest 70 people involved in the construction Mafia.
But DA MP Tim Brauteseth said his figure was contrary to the one given by Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Sihle Zikalala, who said 200 people have been arrested for being involved in the construction Mafia.
Ramaphosa, who was answering questions in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Thursday, said it was critical that they crack the construction Mafia and syndicates involved in the destruction of the infrastructure.
Ramaphosa also told the NCOP that they have now sent their task teams across the country to arrest those behind the construction Mafia and ensure projects were not disrupted.
He said he has spoken to Minister of Police Bheki Cele and National Commissioner Fannie Masemola about beefing up special task teams.
They want to allocate more resources to ensure the construction Mafia was not able to continue to disrupt businesses.
“I am glad to hear that you have taken note of the activity that is now getting under way in a much more vigorous way with regard to dealing with these criminals, who go to building sites and try to extort money. But as you correctly say, they have now morphed into something else, they are now gangs that go around intimidating businesspeople, taking over building sites.
“We are aware of this and that is why the task teams have been enhanced. That is why we are deploying enormous resources to enable them to do their work. It’s not only to the businesspeople, it’s also to the workers because as those thugs get to building sites they also attack workers and they subject workers to great pressure to do wrong things from time to time.
“We are going to go after those gangs, we are going to go after those people who hijack building sites,” said Ramaphosa.
He said people in the construction Mafia will pay for their crimes and be held accountable.
The State will have to enforce the laws and use its resources with the deployment of the task teams to go after the construction Mafia.
Politics