Volunteer patrols to combat crime with police

In its effort to compliment the effort of the police department to combat crimes, the National Unity and Integration department has come out with a ‘Volunteer Patrol Scheme’ which is scheduled to be launched this September.

Under the initial phase of the scheme, two hundred volunteer patrol control centres will be build to cover the country four ‘hot’ states which include Johor Bahru, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, said the National Unity and Integration department director. Azman Amin Hassan who was speaking during the launch of the ‘Johor 2011 Unity Week’ celebration here.

Also present at the function is the state Exco for Unity, Human Resource, Science, Technology and Innovation, M Asokan.

The volunteer patrol scheme will be widen to cover other states in stages, added Azman.

An allocation of RM24 million from the Home Affairs ministry has been set aside to implement the scheme under the Home Affairs ministry’s NKRA – Security budget.

Each volunteer patrol control centre costs between RM60,000 to RM70,000 to build and the control centre proto type design is undertaken by the Arts and Design faculty of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UiTM).

As at December last year, a total of two thousand two hundred forty six volunteer patrol control centres have been registered under the scheme throughout the country involving some one hundred fifteen thousand members, Azman said.

He added that a portion of the allocation will be used for purchasing communications equipment like walkies-talkies and others.

Memorandum of  Understanding have been signed between the various state and district police department and the volunteer patrol control centres, said Azman.