Easter Trading
It was a good Easter Weekend, and St Francis Bay enjoyed some pleasing trading and foot traffic. Bruce’s Café was very busy, as was the SUPERSPAR. “It was the best Easter in years,” said Richard Moolman. “It was the first time that the town felt normal since December 2019.”
Pam Golding had a bumper start to their season as well, with March being their best month ever, and April sales looking good. The St Francis Brewery also had a good Easter and also compared it to the 2019 holiday.
Kwêla Dorp Van Die Jaar
Kyknet (channel 148) will be announcing the list of finalists in the 2021 Kwêla Dorrp Van Die Jaar competition this Sunday evening. To find out if St Francis Bay is still in the running, tune in to Kyknet at 7pm this Sunday. Should we still be in, then it will go to another round of voting to get to a winning Dorp.
Registration For COVID-19 Vaccine Now Open For Those Over 60.
To be in line to receive a vaccination, people over 60 need to register on https://vaccine.enroll.health.gov.za/ and fill in some personal details. More can be found on this site
https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/registration-covid-19-vaccine-now-open-those-over-60
Lyn from St Francis Property Owners has offered to help anyone who might need help with the registration process. Please feel free to phone her or email her on the details below. Remember that vaccination is voluntary.
- info@sfpo.co.za
- 042 294 0594
Sports Events
There has also been a recent flurry of sporting activities in the St Francis Bay area and further afield, as restrictions continue to ease for such events. Most events still have little or no spectators, but at least the events are running.
In St Francis Bay, we had the Pam Golding King Of The Kromme event, with 85 paddlers entered. Phil Smith was declared King Of The Kromme, and 18-year-old Jade Wilson declared Queen Of The Kromme.
A few of the open-water swimmers of St Francis Bay entered into the gruelling Jendamark Bellbuoy Challenge 5km swim in Port Elizabeth. Local Amica De Jager won the women’s division.
March also saw the People’s Triathlon take place in St Francis Bay, with wonderful support from the community. Images of the three stages of the event can be found here – https://bit.ly/3tF8rDo.
The Seal Point Boardriders Club and Liquid Lines, and The Pound held a Boardriders Club Beach Day for the kids. The day consisted of a mini surf contest and Nippers events, as well as lunch and refreshments.
Dam Levels Drop Below 13%
Kouga residents, businesses and visitors are urged to use water extremely sparingly, with the combined levels of the supply dams in the region having dropped to below 13%.
The communities of Hankey and Patensie have recommenced water rationing.
According to the latest information from Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, the combined levels of the dams that supply water to the regions and Nelson Mandela Bay totalled 12.62% on April 20.
The two biggest dams, Kouga and Impofu, stood at 4.73% and 15.19%, respectively. The Churchill Dam was at 30.45% and the small Loerie Dam at 43.49%.
Wheelie Bins Roll-Out
Once again, we would like to remind all that wheelie bins are available from the Municipality free of charge. The SFPO Association can assist if you are not in town but need to claim yours. Reach out to Lyn Aitken on:
- info@sfpo.co.za
- 042 294 0594
CCTV Cameras
The CCTV system performs a 24/7 monitoring service that provides an effective deterrent to criminals targeting the St Francis Bay area. The cameras include:
- Licence plate recognition (LPR): 303,766 licence plates were registered on our roads in February 2021, with 159 being identified as positive alerts and followed up by Atlas, Calibre or SAPS
- Analytic cameras: a number of our cameras have AI software that monitors their zones and alerts any suspicious activity to the Control Centre operators. In February this year, there were 1,062 analytic activations which generated 52 reactive callouts by Calibre Security. These callouts often result in the person/s who activated the analytic being escorted out of the area if there is no valid reason for them being there.
- PTZ: follow people’s movements and be operated by Control Room staff to follow and zoom in on anything suspicious. These are situated around our primary beaches.
We are satisfied that the CCTV system operates effectively and are in negotiations to implement our continuous improvement policy.
To assist with responses, there is now local access to live and recorded footage. We have also been approached by various parties (i.e. streets, river estates) to possibly extend our camera network into their areas at their own cost.