The DA in Mpumalanga has successfully helped the Delmas Police Station to locate origin of exams papers found in a Highjacked truck which was dumped in the vicinity of the small town (Delmas).
On Tuesday morning, the police found a suspected highjacked truck dumped in Delmas. On closer inspection, they found it contained exam papers. The police then called DA Councillors in the area requesting help with numbers of the Mpumalanga Department of Education and their counterparts in Gauteng.
After being contacted, Councillor Diana Bath of the DA in Victor Khanye Local Municipality called the Gauteng Department of Education on Tuesday. She found that the truck was indeed from the Gauteng and it was on its way to delivery exam papers in Limpopo when it was hijacked either Monday evening or Tuesday morning.
The police were still on the scene on Tuesday gathering evidence. They suspect that the truck may have been hijacked on the N12 and dumped in Delmas. They are also trying to locate the driver of the truck.
We should become more worried by the fact that the escalating cases of truck hijacking and kidnappings in Delmas is now affecting the future of our children. This literally means that the children who were supposed to write their exams in Limpopo on Tuesday – may have to postpone because of criminals who have no regard for others.
The DA is concerned that in this technological era of the Fourt Industrial Revolution, exam papers are still transported on trucks exposing them to such cases of hijacking. We are also concerned about the increasing number of cases of truck hijackings in Delmas. This is contributing significantly to the increasing unemployment rate and economic downward spiral in Mpumalanga.
According to Police Recorded Crime Statistics for the Second Quarter of 2022/23, between July to September 2022, Delmas was ranked 1st out of the top 30 Police Stations in the country having reported the most truck jackings – at 21 reported cases. Even more concerning to note is that Delmas was ranked 4th out of the top 30 police stations in the country when it came to the reporting of kidnapping cases as the precinct reported 47 cases in July to September 2022.
We hope that the police will sort out this matter of the exam papers urgently so that the learners in Limpopo can write their exams without any further delay.