Transport MEC Willies Mchunu has ruled out a ban on “blue light” escorts for VIPs in KwaZulu-Natal, after a car crash involving the premier's security detail.
|||Durban - Transport MEC Willies Mchunu has ruled out a ban on “blue light” escorts for VIPs in KwaZulu-Natal, saying existing laws guided how they should be used.
“The issue was addressed in the legislature and the cabinet. We indicated there is legislation that guides the use of blue lights,” Mchunu told reporters in the legislature in Pietermaritzburg yesterday.
He made the comments after a vehicle from Premier Senzo Mchunu’s security detail was involved in a crash, which claimed the lives of two people on the N2 on Friday.
After the collision, there have been calls by the DA for a complete ban on the use of “blue lights”, or for stringent regulation of their use.
“If there is any complaint on their use, it can be forwarded to us and we will investigate if any law has been infringed in the use of blue lights,” Mchunu said.
He said blue lights were allowed in terms of law and that there were categories given to authorities.
“It is in national legislation. I don’t know how I as the MEC can oppose national legislation.”
“They are legislated,” Mchunu said when ruling out a ban on blue lights.
He said an investigation into the crash had been instituted, which he and the premier called for.
Mchunu said he was waiting for a report, expected later this week.
“In the circumstances I do not have a report, I can’t talk to the specifics except to say we sympathise with the families affected.”
He said the premier had, at the weekend, visited the families of the deceased and one of the injured people as part of his duty as the head of provincial government.
The province of the Western Cape had passed legislation in November 2014 to bolster the ban on unnecessary blue-light brigades and regulations have since been published.
According to the Daily News’s sister title the Cape Argus, the regulations warn that “a person may not operate or instruct any other person to operate “an intermittently flashing blue light” emitted from a lamp fitted to that motor vehicle; or a siren fitted to that motor vehicle”, on vehicles carrying office-bearers, or vehicles in their convoy.
According to regulations, blue lights and sirens can only be used “if there is an imminent identified threat regarding the safety or life of the office-bearer, or a threat of damage to the property of the office-bearer”.
Daily News