The South African Police Services (SAPS) is fully in action during lockdown and making sure that all people in South Africa are safe and following the regulations laid by government to help fight the spread of the coronavirus. The government has deployed all police officers in the country and they are currently not allowed to take annual leave as they are needed by the nation during these difficult times.
All police stations are operating 24 hours and not a single one is closed in South Africa during lockdown. Sanitizers and hand gloves have been supplied to all police stations and everyone who enters a station for help should be sanitized and given hand gloves so that they don’t come in touch with those who are helping them. The following distance is still the same at police stations should there be a queue, one metre to the next person.
Police officers are at all times advised to make sure that whenever they meet people on the streets they should ask for permission letters. No one is allowed to be in the streets in South Africa except for essential goods. All people who are allowed to travel to work have all been provided with permits by the government to let police know that they are allowed to travel from their homes to work during lockdown.
South Africans who are not obeying the regulation of government are under a lot of trouble with SAPS as they are arrested on a daily basis. There are a lot of people who have been arrested for trying to travel from one province to the other without a permit or with a fake permit. Some people have been arrested for attending funerals where they were more than 50 in one funeral and some families were fined about R5000 for having more than 50 people in their funerals.
A number of shop owners have been arrested around South Africa for selling non essential goods to the public during lockdown. The government has given SAPS full power to arrest any shop owner who sell all things listed not to be essential goods during lockdown. Those shops have been closed and their owners have to go to court for doing so and it might happen that they never operate again as it is a criminal offence not to obey regulations under national disaster management.
While on duty during lockdown, the SAPS are allowed to search every house in the country to make sure they combat every unlawful acts happening around the country. There are a number of people who have been arrested for selling unregulated goods that are not authorized by government. There are a lot of people who are trading illegally in South Africa and most of them are selling goods not tested by the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS).
