Malawi’s Southern region has registered a 6.1 percent increase in crime rate from January to July this year, the Malawi Police Service has said.
Presenting a report in Blantyre during a strategic management meeting for police officers from the region on today, Research and Planning Coordinator for the South, Assistant Superintendent Allan Thom said the region has registered 14820 criminal cases, compared to 13913 cases during the same period last year.
However, Thom said the region managed to reduce traffic offences by 2.7 percent.
“We have registered 2370 traffic offences on the said period while last year we registered 2436 cases,” explained Thom.
He said 141 casualties have been registered on the region’s roads and that most victims were male pedestrians. According to Thom, 131 casualties were registered last year.
Commissioner of Police for the Southern region, Demster Chigwenembe said the report meant that the police needs to engage an extra gear in fighting crime.
“We need to deal with the problem with urgency; we cannot sit back and watch this happen as we all know that crime management is core function of the police,” he said.
Chigwenembe said he plans to revamp community policing in the region and advised officers to maintain a good relationship with community members so that they open up for crime reporting.
“We will also intensify police patrols and deploy the police mobile service in strategic places so that we reverse these figures come December this year,” he assured.
