SKELMS don’t stand a chance when it comes to the Matroosfontein Neighbourhood Watch as they are working out while combatting crime.
The members from the neighbourhood watch have given a new meaning to their night patrols where they ensure their community is safe by what they call "fitness patrol".
Chairperson Thurston Cooper said the initiative was started two weeks ago, as the members cover a 10km walk, starting with a warm-up and stop to do stretches at various points in between their patrol.
He explains: “It is a good initiative where we as a neighbourhood watch bring our community together by doing fitness walks by bringing visibility into the area and also bringing down our crime rate.
"Matroosfontein is an area where we have a lot of house break-ins and cable theft, not so much gangsterism.
"We started thinking of how we can get more people involved, especially our community and out on the street showing awareness to our neighbouring areas.
"The walk is about 10km so when we start off it is a bit cold and the muscles are stiff, so we like to loosen up a little by doing a few stretches and shaking up to warm the muscles. Then we continue to do stretches on certain corners.
"The group has grown, we take a register every evening, we started off with about 27 people and now we are about 50 people and the numbers continue to climb.”
Thurston says the group meets every night at Matroosfontein Civic Centre at 8pm from Monday to Friday and so far they have seen a decline in crime.
He adds: “It has dramatically brought down our crime rate. Since we have been doing this, we have had one incident - yesterday morning at 3.50am. But that is because we were not patrolling at that time or on weekends.
"It just shows how bringing awareness changes the mindset of even the criminals because they see the whole community is coming together including SAPS, ADT and Law Enforcement pops in now and again.
“We even have people from outside areas contacting us to join us and that is a good thing because we are not just neighbourhood watch members on patrol but the community members are involved as well.
"We are definitely going to continue with it because it has been a success and we want to get as many people involved and in return we are also helping everyone."
He said that every night the group end it off their fitness walk with a free coffee at the BP Garage.