By Kefiloe Kajane
The National Covid-19 Secretariat (NACOSEC) and the Lesotho Red Cross Society this week held a Covid-19 training for community policing forums at Ha ‘Mamathe in the Berea district.
Community policing forums are made up of people from different communities and police representatives who meet to discuss safety problems in their communities. They aim at ensuring police accountability, transparency, and effectiveness in the community.
The training focused mainly on prevention of Covid-19 and touched on different safety protocols like regular washing of hands, and the importance of wearing masks.
NACOSEC health practitioner, Nosipho Lerotholi, said they took time to come to the community policing forums as they know that they are the ones that work with the community the most. She said they wanted to educate them about the safety measures of Covid19 and how they can protect themselves and the community against it.
Lerotholi indicated that it is important for community leaders to know how Covid-19 spreads and its symptoms, so that when there is a problem they will know which steps to take. She said it was refreshing to see community policing forums so interested in such a training because it shows that they are eager to help their communities.
“This training has made me very hopeful because I see that we are going to work perfectly with you. The government alone cannot beat this; we need as many hands as possible so that we can reduce the number of Covid-19 cases and now that we have the community policing forums trained, I know together we can do it,” she said.
At the same occasion, the chief of Ha ‘Mamathe Morena Koali Moshoeshoe paid tribute to NACOSEC and Red Cross for training his people, and expressed confidence that this would benefit his community immensely.
He further encouraged members of the community policing forums to pass on their knowledge to the rest of community. He wished for the pandemic to be defeated so life can go back to normal.
Meanwhile, the officer in charge at ‘Mamathe Police Station Inspector Sebili Tjokosela said they work together with the police community forum to preventing crimes, and to fight Covid-19.
“They have been of great help in reporting people who enter the country through illegal ports of entry and taking them to test for Covid-19. This means they work first hand with people who are at high risk, so this was needed and very necessary,” Tjokosela said.
