Durban - Efforts are being made to get Limpopo courts back on track after they being without much-needed functional recording equipment since last year.
According to the Department of Justice and Correctional Services, the contract of the service provider appointed in December 2020 expired in January 2022, and a new service provider, Morobisi Technologies, was appointed in April 2022 to maintain, monitor and repair the CCTV systems.
The department said courts without Security CCTV Systems are physically monitored by the Outsourced Guardian Services, as contracted by the department.
Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola was responding to a question put forward by the DA's Advocate Glynnis Breytenbach on the progress made following the need for infrastructure maintenance. She said several courts across the province had been without functional court recording equipment since August 2021.
Lamola said a service provider had been appointed for the next 12 months while awaiting the finalisation of the procurement of a solution for maintenance and support services.
Lamola explained that the maintenance and support services include support for both the court recording technology systems and SOS systems.
"The process of dealing with all backlogs technical repair, as logged, has commenced in February 2022. The biggest challenge in resolving logged calls was the replacement of the hardware, which comprised about 80% of the calls. The hardware could only be obtained via a service provider accredited for the solution and the hardware. These calls are currently being dealt with as part of the 12 month contract," the Minister said.
He said, concurrent to this, the department has already started with the procurement process to appoint a service provider to deliver the support and maintenance for CRT and SOS systems over a period of three three years.
Lamola said, at the date of responding to this question, this process had progressed quite significantly, with the procurement process expected to be finalised by the end of June 2022, barring any delays in the process. He said implementation of this process was being monitored on a weekly basis by the relevant senior manager, supported by a task team monitoring high-priority procurements.
Lamola said the department currently has 11 courts equipped with security CCTV Systems in the Limpopo province.
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