Emergency services in rural and semi-urban areas are not easily accessible and often not well-resourced to cope with emergencies. This includes the provision of emergency treatment in the case of burns, blocked airways, traffic injuries, wounds, heart failure and other illnesses. A short response time is essential to save lives or mitigate the consequences.
Bakwena Platinum Corridor Concessionaire (Pty) Ltd, (Bakwena), in partnership with the South African Red Cross, developed a Disaster Management project in 2013 in the Bapong/ Majakaneng area. Since then another 4 teams were added which covered Hammanskraal, Mooinooi, Swartruggens and Groot Marico area.
The main objective of this project is to provide communities with the resources to become self-reliant by having access to trained groups of First Aid and Disaster Management Teams linked to professional emergency services, as well as access to individuals with training in home-based care, firefighting, drug recognition and others.
During 2020, Bakwena’s Disaster Management Teams and Drama Pioneers from the various areas (Hammanskraal, Bapong, Majakaneng, Bokamosa Mooinooi, Marikana/Rustenburg, Swartruggens, Groot Marico, Zeerust and Dinokana), united and through the South African Red Cross Society, Bakwena’s CSI Service Provider, CapaSity, the North West Department of Health and City of Tshwane (Hammanskraal), received COVID-19 training and support which enabled the teams to assist both the SA Red Cross and Department of Health with mass COVID-19 screening and education campaigns as well as contact tracing.
It is encouraging that through these partnerships, these teams were and still are called upon by various Municipalities to assist in their areas.
2021 kicked off with an assessment of each group in terms of their membership structure, representation and activity levels. The next step was to identify individual skills and passions and find common denominators within the group. This was done in partnership with Career Active who did brain profiling of individuals and then set assignments for the group to find common denominators. Hammanskraal, Mooinooi (Bokamoso) and Swartruggens (Borolelo) groups have already completed this profiling.
The strategy for 2021 is to train all the groups in Community Based Health and First Aid with Capasity (Bakwena’s CSI Service Provider) and SARCS (The South African Red Cross Society). This training course entails a wide variety of themes, but includes community development skills. Each team will profile their own community in terms of vulnerabilities and strengths and organise stakeholder meetings to share their findings and recommendations. The Mooinooi and Hammanskraal groups have completed this training and the Swartruggens group is in the process of being trained followed by the Groot Marico team.
“Bakwena implements various programmes designed to improve the health and wellbeing of the communities along its corridor and we are humbled that we have been able to actively play a role in upskilling and empowering these community volunteers to be able to respond and assist their communities in terms of health and safety”, says Solomon Kganyago, Chief Operating Officer for Bakwena
